In A Dry Season

road-safety talks. Not one active investigation in nine months. He was so far out of the loop he might as well have been on Pluto; even the few informers he had cultivated since arriving in Eastvale had deserted him. Surely the situation wasn’t going to change this easily? There had to be more to it; Riddle never made a move without a hidden agenda.

“We’ve just got a report in from Harkside,” Riddle went on. “A young lad found some bones at the bottom of Thornfield Reservoir. It’s one of the ones that dried up over the summer. Used to be a village there, I gather. Anyway, there’s nothing but a section station in Harkside, and all they’ve got is a lowly DS. I want you down there as senior investigating officer.”

“Old bones? Can’t it wait?”

“Probably. But I’d rather you get started right away. Any problem with that?”

“What about Harrogate or Ripon?”

“Too busy. Don’t be such an ungrateful bastard, Banks. Here’s the perfect opportunity for you to drag your career out of the slump it’s fallen into.”

Sure, Banks thought, and pigs can fly. He hadn’t fallen into the slump, he had been pushed, and, knowing Jimmy Riddle, this case was only going to push him even deeper into it. “Human bones?”

“We don’t know yet. In fact, we know nothing at all so far. That’s why I want you to get down there and find out.”

“Harkside?”

“No. Thornfield bloody Reservoir. You’ll find the local DS already at the scene. Cabbot’s the name.”

Banks stopped to think. What the hell was going on here? Riddle was clearly not doing him any favors; he must have got tired of confining Banks to the station and thought up some new and interesting way to torture him.

A skeleton in a dried-up reservoir?

A detective chief inspector would not, under normal circumstances, be dispatched to the remote borders of the county simply to examine a pile of old bones. Also, chief constables never assigned cases to detectives. That was a job for the superintendent or chief superintendent. In Banks’s experience, CCs usually restricted their activities to waffling on the telly, opening farm shows and judging brass-band competitions. Except for bloody Jimmy Riddle, of course, Mr. Hands-On himself, who would never miss an opportunity to rub salt in Banks’s wounds.

However busy Harrogate and Ripon were, Banks was certain they could spare someone qualified to do the job. Riddle obviously thought the case would be boring and unpleasant, or both, and that it would lead to certain failure and embarrassment; otherwise, why give it to Banks? And this DS Cabbot, whoever he was, was probably as thick as pigshit or he would have been left to handle things himself. Besides, why else was a detective sergeant stuck in a section station in Harkside, of all places? Hardly the crime capital of the north.

“And, Banks.”

“Sir?”

“Don’t forget your wellies.”

Banks could have sworn he heard Riddle snicker like a school bully.

He dug out a map of the Yorkshire Dales and checked the lie of the land. Thornfield was the westernmost in a chain of three linked reservoirs built along the River Rowan, which ran more or less east from its source high in the Pennines until it turned south and joined the River Wharfe near Otley. Though Thornfield was only about twenty-five miles away as the crow flies, there was no fast way, only minor unfenced roads for the most part. Banks traced a route on the map with his forefinger. He would probably be best heading south over the moors and along Langstrothdale Chase to Grassington, then east toward Pateley Bridge. Even then it would probably take an hour or more.

After a quick shower, Banks picked up his jacket and tapped his pockets by habit to make certain he had car keys and wallet, then walked out into the afternoon sunshine.

Before setting off, he stood for a moment, resting his hands on the warm stone wall and looked down at the bare rocks where Gratly waterfalls should be. A quote from a T. S. Eliot poem he had read the previous evening came to his mind: “Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.” Very apt. It had been a long drought; everything was dry that summer, including Banks’s thoughts.

His conversation with Brian still nagged on his mind; he wished it hadn’t ended the way it had. Though Banks knew he fretted more about his daughter Tracy, who was at present traveling around France in an old van with a couple of girlfriends, that didn’t mean he wasn’t concerned about Brian.

Because of his job, Banks had seen so many kids go wrong, that it was beyond a joke. Drugs. Vandalism. Mugging. Burglary. Violent crime. Brian was too sensible to do anything like that, Banks had always told himself; he had been given every possible middle-class advantage. More than Banks had ever got. Which was probably why he felt more hurt than anything by his son’s comments.

A couple of ramblers passed by the front of the cottage, heavy rucksacks on their backs, knotted leg muscles, shorts, sturdy hiking boots, Ordnance Survey maps hanging in little plastic holders around their necks in case it rained. Some hope. Banks said hello, remarked on the good weather and got into the Cavalier. The upholstery was so hot he almost jumped out again.

Well, he thought, fumbling for a cassette to play, Brian was old enough to make his own decisions. If he wanted to chuck everything in for a shot at fame and fortune, that was up to him, wasn’t it?

At least Banks had a real job to do. Jimmy Riddle had made a mistake this time. No doubt he believed he had given Banks a filthy, dead-end job, full of opportunities for cock-ups; no doubt the dice were loaded against him; but anything was better than sitting in his office. Riddle had overlooked the one overriding characteristic Banks possessed, even at his lowest ebb: curiosity.

Feeling, for a moment, like a grounded pilot suddenly given permission to fly again, Banks slipped Love’s Forever Changes in the cassette player and drove off, spraying gravel.

The book-signing started at half past six, but Vivian Elmsley had told her publicist, Wendi, that she liked to arrive early, get familiar with the place and have a chat with the staff.

There was already a crowd at quarter past. Still, it was only to be expected. All of a sudden, after twenty novels in as many years, Vivian Elmsley was a success.

Though her reputation and her sales had grown steadily over the years, her Detective Inspector Niven series, which accounted for fifteen of the twenty books, had recently made it to the small screen with a handsome lead actor, glossy production values and a big budget. The first three episodes had been shown, to great critical acclaim – especially given how bored many television critics had become with police dramas recently – and as a result Vivian had become, over the past month or so, about as familiar a face to the general public as a writer ever is.

She had been on the cover of Night amp; Day, had been interviewed by Melvyn Bragg on the “South Bank Show” and featured prominently in Woman’s Own magazine. After all, becoming an “overnight success” in one’s seventies was quite newsworthy. Some people even recognized her in the street.

Adrian, the event organizer, gave her a glass of red wine, while Thalia arranged the books on the low table in front of the settee. At half past six on the dot, Adrian introduced her by saying that she needed no introduction, and to a smattering of applause she picked up her copy of the latest Inspector Niven story, Traces of Sin, and began to read from the opening section.

About five minutes was enough, Vivian reckoned. Anything less made her look as if she couldn’t wait to get away; anything more risked losing the audience’s attention. The settee was so soft and deep that it seemed to enfold her as she read. She wondered how she would ever get out of it. She was hardly a spry young thing anymore.

After the reading, people formed an orderly queue, and Vivian signed their books, pausing to chat briefly with everyone, asking if they wanted any specific sort of dedication and making sure she spelled their names right. It was all very well if someone said he was called “John,” but how were you to know it wasn’t spelled “Jon”? Then there were the more complex variations: “Donna,” or “Dawna”? “Janice,” or “Janis”?

Vivian looked down at her hand as she signed. Talon-like, she thought, almost skeletal, dotted with liver spots,