Wednesday's Child

I

Marjorie Bingham lingered behind the others on the narrow track and kicked at small stones as she walked. She could hear her husband’s muffled voice, carried back on the breeze, as he explained the history of Dales lead mining to Andrew and Jane.

“Most people think that lead mining here only goes back as far as Roman times. It doesn’t, you know. It goes back much further than that. It might even go back as far as the Bronze Age — though there’s no hard evidence for that, of course — but certainly the Brigantes…”

God, she thought, what a bloody bore Roger has become. Only six months up from Coventry after the company move and here he is, playing the country squire and rabbiting on about spalling hammers, knockstones, buckers and hotching tubs. And just look at him: pants tucked into the expensive hiking boots, walking-stick, orange Gore-Tex anorak. All for a quarter-mile track from the Range Rover to the old mine.

Knowing Andrew, Marjorie thought, he was probably thinking about opening time, and Jane was absorbed with her new baby, which she carried in a kind of makeshift sack on her back. Little Annette was asleep, one leg poking out each side of the central strap, her head lolling, oblivious to them all, and especially oblivious to the bloody lead mines.

“Of course, the Romans used lead in great quantities. You know how advanced their plumbing systems were for their time. I know you’ve been to the Roman Baths in Bath, Andrew, and I’m sure you’ll agree…”

Young Megan capered ahead picking flowers, reciting, “He loves me, he loves me not…” as she pulled off the petals and tossed them in the air. Then she spread her arms out and pretended to walk a tightrope. She didn’t have a care in the world, either, Marjorie thought. Why do we lose that sense of wonder in nature? she asked herself. How does it happen? Where does it go? It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate the countryside — there was no denying it was beautiful, not to mention healthy, especially on a lovely autumn morning like this — but she couldn’t feel ecstatic about it. To be honest, she loved the shops and the busy hum of city life much more. Even Eastvale would have been preferable. But no: Roger said they had to seize their opportunity for a newer, better lifestyle when it came along. And so they had ended up in dull, sleepy Lyndgarth.

A weekend in the country now and again suited Marjorie perfectly — that was what it was there for, after all, unless you were a farmer, a painter or a poet — but this felt more like incarceration. She hadn’t been able to find a job, and the new neighbours weren’t particularly friendly, either. Someone told her you have to winter out two years before you are accepted, but she didn’t think she could stand it that long. And the fact that Roger was in his element didn’t help much either. She was bored stiff. She didn’t have children to fill her days like Jane. Still, at least their visit had brought a welcome break to the routine. She should be grateful for that. She would have been if it hadn’t been for Roger seizing his chance to pontificate.

“The Pennine mines are the only ones in Yorkshire. Know why? It’s because the lead ore occurs in Carboniferous rocks — the Yoredale Series and Millstone Grit. The ores aren’t exactly part of the rocks, you understand, but…”

At last they reached the old smelting mill, not much more than a pile of stones, really, and not much bigger than a detached house. Most of the roof had collapsed, leaving only the weatherworn beams. Inside, sunlight shone through the roof and through the gaps between the stones onto the ruined ore hearths and furnaces, and picked out the motes of dust they kicked up. Marjorie had never liked the old mill. It was a dry, smelly, spidery sort of place.

Over in one corner, the dusty ground was darkened, as if some wandering drunk had been sick there.

“In the earlier mills,” Roger went on, “they used to burn off the sulphur first, changing the lead to oxide. Of course, for that you need places to roast then reduce the ore. But by the time this mill was built, they’d invented vertical furnaces that used bellows…”

They all obediently followed his pointing stick and oohed and aahed. He should have been a bloody tour guide, Marjorie thought.

Suddenly, Jane looked nervously around the mill. “Where’s Megan?” she asked.

“Probably playing outside,” Marjorie said, noting the anxiety in her voice. “Don’t worry, I’ll find her. I’ve heard this bit before, anyway.” Roger glared at her as she left.

Thankful to be out of the gloomy smelting mill and away from the droning echo of Roger’s voice, Marjorie shielded her eyes and looked around. Megan was clambering over a pile of scree towards the opening of the flue. Marjorie knew all about the flue, because she’d heard Roger read her the relevant sections from the book several times out loud. “Listen to this, darling…” But the only thing she needed to know right now was that it could be dangerous.

Built originally to extract and condense the fumes of the smelting process and carry them far away from the immediate area, the flue was a bricked hump about two hundred yards long. It looked very much like a tall factory chimney that had fallen on its side and half buried itself in the gentle slope of the hillside. Because it was old, sections of the arched roof had collapsed here and there, and more were liable to follow suit at any moment. It had originally ended at a vertical chimney on the hilltop, designed to carry the lead fumes away, but that had long since fallen down.

Megan was happily scrambling along over the scree to the dark entrance. Marjorie set off after her. “Megan!” she shouted. “Come away!” Behind, she noticed that the others had come out of the smelting mill and stood watching a few yards away. “It’s all right,” Marjorie said over her shoulder. “I’ll catch up with her before she gets inside. It’s quite safe out here.”

Maybe she had underestimated the six-year-old’s speed and nimbleness, she thought, as she struggled over the rocks, trying not to trip up. But she made it. Megan got to the verge of the flue just as Marjorie managed to grab her shoulder.

“It’s not safe, Megan,” she said, sitting down to catch her breath. “You mustn’t go in there.” As she looked into the black hole, she shivered. Far up ahead, she could see the tiny coin of light where the flue ended. Its floor was scattered with bits of stone, most likely fallen from the arched roof. A few yards or so in, she noticed a large, oddly-shaped hump. It was probably a collapsed section, but something about it made her curious. It looked somehow deliberate, not quite as random as the other scatterings. She packed Megan off down the rise to join her parents and crawled into the opening.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she heard Roger calling. “Marjorie! Come back!” But she ignored him. Just for a moment, the sunlight had flashed on something ahead.

It was dark inside the flue, despite the light from behind her, and she hurt her knees as she crawled over the bed of flinty stones. She tried to stand, back bent low. The place smelled dank and foisty, and she tried to keep her breathing to an absolute minimum. She remembered Roger saying that the poisonous fumes of the volatilized lead condensed on the flue walls, which boys were employed to scrape at regular intervals. What a job that would be, she thought, crawling through here day after day and scraping lead off the stone.

When she arrived about six feet away from the hump, she could still make out nothing clearly. If she edged to one side and moulded her back against the curve of the wall, some light passed her and provided a faint outline. Then Roger blocked the entrance and yelled for her to come back.

“Get out of the way,” she shouted. “I can’t see a bloody thing!”

Oddly enough, Roger did as she asked. A faint wash of light picked out some of the details in the heap of stones, and as soon as Marjorie saw the small hand sticking out of the pile, she screamed and started to turn. As she did so, she stumbled and kicked some small stones near the body. A cloud of flies rose out of the heap and buzzed angrily up the flue.

II

“We’ve had three confessions already,” said Gristhorpe, as Banks took the Helmthorpe road out of Eastvale. Roger Bingham’s message had been vague, and both avoided speculating whether the body of Gemma Scupham had been discovered. “One of them told us at great length exactly what he’d done with Gemma and how much he enjoyed it. I tell you, Alan, sometimes it’s a bloody shame you can’t lock a man up for his thoughts.” He ran a hand through his unruly grey hair. “Good God, did I really say that? Shows how much this business is getting to me. Anyway, we got him for wasting police time instead. He’ll do six months with any luck.”

“The searchers turn up anything yet?” Banks asked.

Gristhorpe shook his head. “They’re doing the area east of the estate now, past the railway tracks. We’ve taken on a few civilian volunteers. And we’ve interviewed all the known local child-molesters. Nothing there.”

At Fortford, Banks turned left by the pub and passed between the Roman fort and the village green.

“Anything on the car?” Gristhorpe asked.

After his visit to Brenda Scupham the previous afternoon, Banks had caught up with his paperwork on the case, helped Susan with the house-to-house and Richmond check the garages and car-rental agencies.

“Not so far. We’ve got through most of the garages and agencies. Phil’s still at it.”

“Well, maybe it was their own car, after all,” said Gristhorpe. “They’ve vanished into thin air, Alan. How can they do that?”

“Either very clever or very lucky, I suppose. No one on the estate was very communicative, either,” he went on. “I only did a couple of streets with Susan, but she said the others were no different. And she had another chat with that Mr Carter at number sixteen. Waste of time, she said. He just wanted to talk about Dunkirk. People are scared, you know, even when we show them our warrant cards.”

“I don’t blame them,” said Gristhorpe.

“But I reckon if it had happened to someone else around there, they’d speak up now.”

“You never know with people, Alan. Remember the old Yorkshire saying, ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk.’”

Banks laughed. At the junction in Relton, he turned right. A slow-moving tractor in front pulled over to the side and gave him just enough space to squeeze by. “I’ve been on the phone to Belfast, too,” he added. “The lads over there spent most of yesterday with Terry Garswood, Gemma’s father, and they’re certain he had nothing to do with it. For a start, he was on duty that day and couldn’t have got away without someone noticing, and apparently he had neither the inclination nor the money to hire someone else to steal her for him.”

“Well, look on the bright side,” said Gristhorpe. “At least that’s one less lead to follow. There it is.” He pointed out of the car window. “Pull in here.”

They were on Mortsett Lane, about halfway between Relton and Gratly, below the looming bulk of Tetchley Fell. Banks pulled up on the gravelled lay-by next to a Range Rover and looked at the narrow track. There was no way you could get a car up there, he thought. The stony path was only about three feet wide, and it was bordered by small boulders and chips of flint that would play havoc with tires. Ahead, he could just make out the partially collapsed roof of the smelting mill over the rise.

He had seen the place before, but from a different perspective. Looking down from the Roman road that cut diagonally across the fell, he had been impressed by the range of colour, from pale yellow to dark green, purple and grey, and by the flue hugging the hillside like a long stone tunnel. Now, as they neared the mill, all he could see was the murky opening to his left and the group of people huddled together by the mill to his right.

“Which one of you is Mr Bingham?” Gristhorpe asked, after he had introduced Banks and himself.

“I am,” said a countryish type, in gear far too expensive and inappropriate for the short walk. “My wife, Marjorie, found the… er… Well, I remembered there was a phonebox back down on the road.”

Gristhorpe nodded and turned to the woman. “Did you disturb anything?”

She shook her head. “No. I never touched… I… When I saw the hand I ran back. And the flies… Oh, my God… the flies…”

Her husband took her hand and she buried her face in his shoulder. The other couple looked on sadly, the man with a grim set to his mouth and the woman stroking her child’s golden hair. Banks noticed a head over her shoulder, a sleeping baby in a backpack.

Gristhorpe turned to Banks. “Shall we?”

Banks nodded and followed him over the scree. They had to walk carefully, as many of the stones wobbled under them. Finally, they managed to scrabble to the gloomy semi-circle and peer inside. Gristhorpe brought the torch out of his pocket and shone it ahead. They could easily see the heap that Marjorie Bingham had mentioned, but couldn’t pick out any details from so far away. Gristhorpe had to bend almost double to walk, which made it very difficult to negotiate a path through the rubble that littered the flue’s floor. Banks, being a little shorter, found it easier. But he felt uncomfortable.

He had never liked caves; they always seemed to bring out a latent sense of claustrophobia. Once he and Sandra had visited Ingleton and gone in the caves there. When he had to stoop and almost crawl on his belly to get under a low overhang, he had felt the weight of the mountain pressing on his back and had to struggle to keep his breathing regular. The flue wasn’t as bad as that, but he could still feel the heavy darkness pushing at him from all sides.

Gristhorpe walked a few feet behind him with the torch. Its beam danced over lead-stained stones, which glistened here and there as if snails had left their slimy tracks. They went as cautiously as they could in order not to destroy any forensic evidence, but it was impossible to pick a narrow path through the rubble of the flue. Finally, they stood close enough, and Gristhorpe’s torch lit on a small hand raised from a heap of rocks. They could see nothing else of the body, as it had been entirely covered by stones.

As they stood and looked at the hand, a gust of wind blew and made a low moaning sound in the flue like someone blowing over the lip of a bottle. Gristhorpe turned off the torch and they headed back for the entrance. They had probably disturbed too much already, but they had to verify that there was indeed a body on the site. So often people simply thought they had found a corpse, and the truth turned out to be different. Now they had to follow procedure.

First they would call the police surgeon to ascertain that the body was indeed dead. No matter how obvious it might appear, no matter even if the body is decapitated or chopped into a dozen pieces, it is not dead until a qualified doctor says it is.

Then the SOCO team would arrive and mark off the area with their white plastic tape. It might not seem necessary in such an isolated place, but the searching of a crime scene was a very serious business, and there were guidelines to follow. With Vic Manson in charge, they would take photographs and search the area around the body, looking for hairs, fibres, anything that the killer may have left behind. And then, when the photographs had been taken, the doctor would take a closer look at the body. In this case, he might move aside a few stones and look for obvious causes of death. There was nothing more that Banks and Gristhorpe could do until they at least had some information on the identity of the victim.

Banks gulped in the fresh, bright air as they emerged into daylight. He felt as if he had just made an ascent from the bottom of a deep, dark ocean with only seconds to spare before his oxygen ran out. Gristhorpe stood beside him and stretched, rubbing his lower back and grimacing.

“I’ll call it in,” said Banks.

Gristhorpe nodded. “Aye. And I’ll have another word with this lot over here.” He shook his head slowly. “Looks like we’ve found her.”

There was nothing to do but wait after Banks had made the call over the police radio. Gristhorpe got Marjorie Bingham’s story, then let the shocked group go home.

Banks leaned against the rough stone of the smelting mill and lit a cigarette as Gristhorpe walked carefully around the flue entrance looking down at the ground. It was quiet up there except for the occasional mournful call of a curlew gliding over the moorland, a cry that harmonized strangely with the deep sigh of the breeze blowing down the flue and ruffling the blades of grass on the hillside. The sky was the whitish blue of skim milk, and it set off the browns, greens and yellows of the desolate landscape. Beyond the mill, Banks could see the purple-grey cleft of a dried-up stream-bed cutting across the moorland.

Gristhorpe, kneeling to peer at the grass a few yards to the right of the flue entrance, beckoned Banks over. Banks knelt beside him and looked at the rusty smear on the grass.

“Blood?” he said.

“Looks like it. If so, maybe she was killed out here and they dragged her into the flue to hide the body.”

Banks looked at the blood again. “It doesn’t look like much, though, does it?” he said. “And I’d say it’s smeared rather than spilled.”

“Aye,” said Gristhorpe, standing. “Like someone wiped off a knife or something. We’ll leave it to the SOCOs.”

The first to arrive was Peter Darby, the photographer. He came bounding up the track, fresh-faced, two cameras slung around his neck and a square metal case at his side. If it’s Gemma Scupham in there, Banks thought, he won’t look so bloody cheerful when he comes out.

Darby went to take some preliminary photographs, starting with the stained grass, on Gristhorpe’s suggestion, then the flue entrance, then carefully making his way inside. Banks could see the bulbs flash in the black hole as Darby took his pictures. When he’d finished in the flue, he took more photographs in and around the smelting mill.

About half an hour after Peter Darby, Dr Glendenning came huffing and puffing up the path.

“At least I didn’t need a bloody truss to get here this time,” he said, referring to the occasion when they had all been winched up the side of Rawley Force to get to a body in a hanging valley. He pointed towards the flue. “In there, you said?”

Gristhorpe nodded.

“Hmphh. Why the bloody hell do you keep on finding bodies in awkward places, eh? I’m not getting any younger, you know. It’s not even my job. You could get a bloody GP to pronounce the body dead at the scene.”

Banks shrugged. “Sorry.” Glendenning was a Home Office pathologist, one of the best in the country, and both Banks and Gristhorpe knew he would be offended if they didn’t call him to the scene first.

“Aye, well…” He turned towards the entrance.

They accompanied Glendenning as he picked his way over the scree, complaining all the way, and ducked to enter the flue. Banks held the torch this time. It didn’t provide much light, but the SOCOs had been instructed to bring bottled-gas lamps as it would be impossible to get a van with a generator up the narrow track.

Glendenning knelt for a while, sniffing the air and glancing around the inside of the flue, then he touched the small hand and moved it, muttering to himself. Next he took out a mercury thermometer and held it close to the body, measuring the air temperature.

The entrance of the flue darkened and someone called out. It was Vic Manson, fingerprint expert and leader of the SOCO team. He came up the passage with a gas-lamp and soon the place was full of light. It cast eerie shadows on the slimy stone walls and gave an unreal sheen to the heap of the stones on the ground. Manson called back to one of his assistants and asked him to bring up some large plastic bags.

Then everyone stood silent, breath held, as the men started to lift the stones and place them in the bags for later forensic investigation. A few spiders scurried away and a couple of obstinate flies buzzed the men angrily then zigzagged off.

Banks leaned against the wall, his back bent into its curve. One stone, two, three… Then a whole arm became visible.

Banks and Gristhorpe moved forward. They crouched over and looked at the small hand, then both saw the man’s wristwatch and frayed sleeve of a grey bomber-jacket. “It’s not her,” Gristhorpe whispered. “Jesus Christ, it’s not Gemma Scupham.”

Banks felt the relief, too. He had always clung to a vague hope that Gemma might still be alive, but the discovery of the body had seemed to wreck all that. Nobody else in the dale had been reported missing. And now, as Manson and his men picked stone after stone away, they looked down at what was obviously the body of a young man, complete with moustache. A young man with unusually small hands. But, Banks asked himself, if it isn’t Gemma Scupham, then who the hell is it?

III

Jenny darted into the Eastvale Regional Headquarters at two o’clock, just in time for her appointment with Banks. She always seemed to be rushing these days, she thought, as if she were a watch a few minutes slow always trying to catch up. She wasn’t even really late this time.

“Miss Fuller?”

Jenny walked over to the front desk. “Yes?”

“Message from Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe, miss. Says he’s on his way. You can wait in his office if you wish.”

Jenny frowned. “But I thought I was to see Alan — Chief Inspector Banks?”

“He’s at the scene.”

“What scene?”

“It looks like a murder scene. I’m sorry I can’t say any more, miss. We don’t really know anything yet.”

“That’s all right,” Jenny said. “I’ll wait.”

“Very well. The superintendent’s office—”

“I know where it is, thanks.”

Jenny poured herself some coffee from the machine at the bottom of the stairs then went up to Gristhorpe’s office. She had been there before, but never alone. It was larger than Alan’s, and much better appointed. She had heard that rank determines the level of luxury in policemen’s offices, but she also knew that the department itself was hardly likely to supply such things as the large teak desk, or the matching bookcases that covered one wall. The cream and burgundy patterned carpet, perhaps — it was hardly an expensive one, Jenny noticed — but not the shaded desk lamp and the books that lined the shelves.

She glanced over the titles. They were mostly works of criminology and law — the essential Archbold’s Criminal Pleading, Evidence & Practice and Glaister’s Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology in addition to several other technical and forensic texts — but there were also books on history, fishing, cricket, a few novels and Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s edition of The Oxford Book of English Verse. What surprised Jenny most was the number of mystery paperbacks: about four feet of them, mostly Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Edmund Crispin and Michael Innes.

“That’s just the overflow,” a voice said behind her, making her jump. “The rest are at home.”

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Jenny said, putting her hand to her chest. “You startled me.”

“We coppers are a light-footed lot,” Gristhorpe said, with a twinkle in his baby-blue eyes. “Have to be to catch the villains. Sit down.”

Jenny sat. “This murder, I couldn’t help thinking… It’s not…?”

“No, it’s not, thank God. It’s bad enough, though. We don’t know who the victim is yet. I left Alan at the scene. I decided to stick with the Gemma Scupham case and let him handle the murder.”

Jenny had never felt entirely at ease with Superintendent Gristhorpe, but she didn’t know why. He seemed very much his own man — self-contained, strong, determined — and he projected a solid, comforting presence. But something made her feel awkward. Perhaps, she speculated, it was the underlying sense of isolation she sensed, the fortress he seemed to have built around his feelings. She knew about his wife’s death from cancer several years ago, and guessed that perhaps a part of him had died with her. Susan Gay, she remembered, had said that she also felt uncomfortable with him, yet he had a reputation as a kind and compassionate man.

His physical presence was difficult to ignore, too. He was a big man — bulky, but not fat — with bushy eyebrows and an unruly thatch of grey hair. With his reddish, pock-marked complexion and the slightly hooked nose, he was very much the dalesman, she thought, if indeed there was such a creature, weathered and moulded by the landscape.

“I did a bit of preliminary research last night,” Jenny began. “I can probably give you a capsule version of the paedophile types.”

Gristhorpe nodded. As she spoke, Jenny somehow felt that he probably knew more than she did about the subject. After all, some of his books dealt with criminal psychology and forensic psychiatry, and he was reputed to be well read. But she didn’t feel he was simply being polite when he let her speak. No, he was listening all right, listening for something he might not have come across or thought of himself. Watching her carefully with those deceptively innocent eyes.

She balanced her black-rimmed reading-glasses on her nose and took her notes out of her briefcase. “Basically, there are four types of paedophile,” she began. “And so far it doesn’t seem like your couple fits any. The first kind is someone who hasn’t really been able to establish satisfactory relationships with his peers. It’s the most common type, and he only feels sexually comfortable with children. He usually knows his victim, maybe a family friend, or even a relation.”

Gristhorpe nodded. “What about age, roughly?”

“Average age is about forty.”

“Hmm. Go on.”

“The second type is someone who seems to develop normally but finds it increasingly difficult to adjust to adult life — work, marriage, et cetera. Feels inadequate, often turns to drink. Usually the marriage, if there is one, breaks down. With this type, something sets things in motion. He reaches a kind of breaking-point. Maybe his wife or girlfriend is having an affair, intensifying his feelings of inadequacy. This kind doesn’t usually know his victim. It may be someone he sees passing by in a car or something. Again, not much like the situation you described at Brenda Scupham’s.”

“No,” agreed Gristhorpe. “But we’ve got to keep an open mind at this point.”

“And I think we can dismiss the third type, too,” Jenny went on. “This is someone who generally had his formative sexual experiences with young boys in an institution of some kind.”

“Ah,” said Gristhorpe. “Public school?”

Jenny looked up at him and smiled. “I suppose that would qualify.” She turned back to her notes. “Anyway, this type is generally a homosexual paedophile, the type that cruises the streets for victims or uses male prostitutes.”

“And the last?”

“The wild card,” Jenny said. “The psychopathic paedophile. It’s hard to pin this type down. He’s in search of new sexual thrills, and pain and fear are generally involved. He’ll hurt his victims, introduce sharp objects into the sexual organs, that kind of thing. The more aggressive he gets, the more excited he becomes. A person like this usually has a history of anti-social behaviour.”

Gristhorpe held the bridge of his nose and grunted.

“I’m sorry I can’t really be of any more help yet,” Jenny said, “but I’m working on it. The really odd thing, as I told Alan, is that there were two of them, a man and a woman. I want to look a bit further into that aspect.”

Gristhorpe nodded. “Go ahead. And please don’t underestimate your usefulness.”

Jenny smiled at him and shuffled her notes back into the briefcase.

“This stuff the newspapers were on about,” Gristhorpe went on, “organized gangs of paedophiles, what do you think of that?”

Jenny shook her head. “It doesn’t figure. Paedophiles are like other sexual deviants, essentially loners, solo operators. And most of the allegations of ritual abuse turned out to be social workers’ fantasies. Of course, when you get abuse in families, people close ranks. They might look like organized gangs, but they’re not really. Paedophiles simply aren’t the types to form clubs, except…”

“Except what?”

“I was thinking of kiddie porn, child prostitution and the like. It’s around, it happens, there’s no denying it, and that takes a bit of organization.”

“Videos, magazines?”

“Yes. Even snuff films.”

“We’re doing our best,” Gristhorpe said. “I’ve been in touch with the paedophile squad. Those rings are hard to penetrate, but if anything concerning Gemma turns up, believe me, we’ll know about it.”

Jenny stood up. “I’ll do a bit more research.”

“Thanks.” Gristhorpe walked over to open the door for her.

Jenny dashed back to her car, got in and turned her key in the ignition. Suddenly, she paused. She couldn’t remember where she was supposed to go or why she was in such a hurry. She checked her appointment book and then racked her brains to see if she had forgotten anything. No. The truth was, she had nowhere to go and no reason at all to hurry.

IV

Banks breathed deeply, grateful for the fresh air outside the flue. Claustrophobia was bad enough, but what he had just seen made it even worse.

After Gristhorpe had gone to meet Jenny, the SOCOs had slowly and carefully removed all the stones from the body of a man in his mid- to late-twenties. When they had finished, Dr Glendenning bent forward to see what he could find out. First, he opened the bomber-jacket and cursed when he had to stop the tangle of greyish intestines from spilling out of the man’s shirt. A couple more flies finally gave up the ghost and crawled out from under the tubing and took off indignantly. The wind moaned down the flue. Quickly, Banks had searched the dead man’s pockets: all empty.

Banks lit a cigarette; fresh air wasn’t enough to get the taste of the flue and of death out of his mouth. The smell was difficult to pin down. Sickly, sweet, with a slight metallic edge, it always seemed to linger around him like an aura for days after attending the scene of a murder.

Glendenning had been crouched in the flue alone for over half an hour now, and the SOCOs were still going over the ground inside the taped-off area: every blade of glass, every stone.

Banks wandered into the smelting mill and looked at the ruins of the furnace and the ore hearth while he waited, trying to put the first shocking glimpse of those spilled intestines out of his mind. He had seen the same thing once before, back in London, and it wasn’t something even the most hardened policeman forgot easily.

He stared at the dullish brown patch in the corner, marked off by the SOCOs as blood. The murder, they said, had probably taken place in the mill.

At last, Glendenning emerged from the flue, red in the face. He stood upright and dusted his jacket where it had come into contact with the stones. A cigarette dangled from his mouth.

“I suppose you want to know it all right away, don’t you?” he said to Banks, sitting on a boulder outside the smelting mill. “Time of death, cause of death, what he had for breakfast?”

Banks grinned. “As much as you can tell me.”

“Aye, well, that might be a bit more than usual in this case. Given the temperature, I’d say rigor mortis went basically according to the norm. It was just after two o’clock when I got the chance to have a really good look at him. Allowing, say, two to three hours for rigor to start, then about ten or twelve to spread, I’d say he was killed sometime after dark last night, but not much later than ten o’clock. His body temperature confirms it, too. Is that good enough for you?”

Banks said it was, thank you very much, doctor, and mentioned the blood in the smelting mill.

“You’re probably right about that,” Glendenning said. “I’ll check post-mortem lividity later when I get him on the table, but as far as I could tell there was no blood around the body, and there would be, given a wound like that.”

“What about cause of death?”

“That’s not difficult. Looks like he was gutted. You saw that for yourself.” Glendenning lit a new cigarette from the stub of his old one. “It’s an especially vicious crime,” he went on. “In the first place, to do something like that you have to get very close.”

“Would it take a lot of strength?”

“Aye, a fair bit to drag the knife up when it’s stuck so deeply in. But not a superman. Given a sharp enough knife. What are you getting at? Man or woman?”

“Something like that.”

“You know how I hate guesswork, laddie, but I’d go for a moderately strong man or an exceptionally strong woman.”

“Thanks. First we’ll check all the female bodybuilders in Yorkshire. Left-handed or right?”

“I should be able to tell you later when I get a good look at the entry point and the direction of the slit.”

“What about the weapon?”

“Again, you’ll have to wait. All I can say now is it looks like a typical upthrust knife wound. Have you made arrangements for the removal?”

Banks nodded.

“Good. I’ll get to it as soon as I can.” Glendenning stood up and headed down the track to his car. Banks looked at his watch: almost three o’clock and he hadn’t had lunch yet. Maybe an hour or so more up here and he’d be able to leave the scene for a local constable to guard. He called Vic Manson over.

“Any sign of the murder weapon?”

“Not so far. I don’t think it’s around here. The lads have almost finished the third grid search, and they’d have found it by now.”

Banks walked back over to the smelting mill and leaned against the wall watching the men examine the scree outside the flue entrance. “A particularly vicious crime,” Dr Glendenning had said. Indeed it was. It was hard to believe, thought Banks, that in such beautiful countryside on such a fine autumn evening, one human being had got so close to another that he could watch, and perhaps even savour, the look in his victim’s eyes as he thrust a sharp knife in his groin and slowly dragged it up through the stomach to the chest.

V

Brenda Scupham lay alone in bed that night. Les was out at the pub. Not that she really cared. These days he was practically worse than useless. He mostly kept out of her way, and that suited her fine. The only thing was, she didn’t really want to be alone tonight. A nice warm body to love her and hold her would help take her mind off the bad things she couldn’t seem to stop herself from feeling.

She hadn’t wanted Gemma, it was true. But things like that happened. She had done her best. At first, there always seemed to be so much to do: changing nappies, feeding, scraping and saving for new clothes. And the sleepless nights she had listened to Gemma cry from her cot, leaving her till she cried herself to sleep because her own mother had said you shouldn’t make a habit of being at a baby’s beck and call. Well, she should know all about that, Brenda thought.

Even as she got older, Gemma had got in the way, too. Every time Brenda had a man over, she had to explain the child. Nobody stayed with her when they found out she had a kid. One night was the best she could expect from most, then a hasty exit, usually well before dawn, and Gemma there wailing away.

Brenda understood women who had beaten or killed their children. It happened all the time. They could drive you to that. One night, she remembered with shame, she had wrapped three-month-old Gemma in blankets and left her on the steps of the Catholic church. She hadn’t been home five minutes before guilt sent her racing back to reclaim the bundle. Luckily, nobody else had got there first.

But no matter what those policemen tried to say, she had never abused Gemma. Some mothers sat their children on the elements of electric cookers, poured boiling water on them, locked them in the cellar without food or drink until they died of dehydration. Brenda would never have done anything like that. She put up with Gemma and took her pleasure when she could. True, she had left the child alone for visits to the pub. But nothing had ever happened to her. Also true, she never had much time to spend with her, what with the odd bit of waitressing she did on the sly to eke out her social. Meals had occasionally been forgotten, old clothes left unwashed too long. Gemma herself, like most kids, was not over-fond of bath-time, and she had never complained about going without a bath for a couple of weeks.

What upset Brenda most as she lay there alone in the dark was accepting that she had never really liked her child. Oh, she had got used to her, all right, but there was something secretive and isolated about Gemma, something alien that Brenda felt she could never reach. And there was something creepy about the way she skulked around the place. Many a time Brenda had felt Gemma’s accusing, woebegone eyes on her. Even now, alone in the dark, she could feel Gemma’s eyes looking at her in that way. Still, you didn’t choose your child, no more than she chose to be born. She wasn’t made to order.

But now Gemma was gone, Brenda felt guilty for feeling relieved when Miss Peterson and Mr Brown took her away. Why did it have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t they have been real social workers like they said they were? Then she wouldn’t have to feel so guilty for being relieved. Now she couldn’t even bear to think about what they might have done to Gemma. She shivered. Gemma must be dead. Brenda only hoped it had happened quickly and painlessly and that soon the police would find out everything and leave her alone to get her grieving done.

Again she replayed what she could remember of the social workers’ visit. Maybe she had been a fool for believing them, but they had looked so real, and they had been so convincing. She knew she had neglected Gemma and that she was wrong to do so, however much she couldn’t help herself. She knew she was guilty, especially after what happened the week before. But they surely couldn’t have known about that? No, they were right. She had to let them take the child. She found herself hoping, after the door closed, that they would decide to keep her or find her a good home. It would be best for everyone that way.

And then there was Les. She remembered defending him to the police that morning, saying he wasn’t much but he was better than nothing. She wasn’t even sure that was true any longer. Mostly, she’d been thinking of sex. He used to do it three, four times a night, if he hadn’t had a skinful of ale, and she couldn’t get enough of him. He had made her laugh, too. But lately all the passion had gone. It happened, she knew, and you became nothing more than a maid, your home no more than a hotel room.

She turned on her side and put her hand between her legs, then began gently stroking herself with her fingers. It would help her forget, she thought, rubbing harder. Forget her foolishness, forget her guilt, forget Gemma. Gemma, precious stone, name stolen from an old schoolfriend whose serene beauty she had always envied.

Just before the climax flooded her, an image of Gemma going out of the door with Mr Brown and Miss Peterson appeared in her mind’s eye. As she came, it receded, like someone waving goodbye from a train window.