Burke, isn’t it?” she managed finally. “Or have you been promoted?”
“Afraid not,” he said. “And it’s Banks, but Alan will do. It’s been a long time.”
“Yes.” Penny got her gin and tonic and raised it to Banks, who clinked it gently with his pint glass.
“Well, nobody put on a major advertising campaign.”
Banks looked around the dim lounge. “I don’t know. You seem to have a devoted following.”
“Word of mouth, mostly. Anyway, yes, I’m back in the old cottage. What brought you here?”
“I heard the music as I was passing,” Banks said. “Recognized your voice. What have you been up to lately?”
A hint of mischief came into her eyes. “Now that would be a very long story indeed, and I’m not sure it would be any of your business.”
“Maybe you could tell me over dinner some evening?”
Penny faced him and frowned, her brows knit together, searching him with those sharp blue eyes, and before she spoke she gave a little shake of her head. “I can’t possibly do that,” she whispered.
“Why not? It’s only a dinner invitation.”
She was backing away from him as she spoke. “I just can’t, that’s all. How can you even ask me?”
“Look, if you’re worried about being seen with a married man, that ended a couple of years back. I’m divorced now.”
Penny looked at him as if he’d missed the point by a hundred miles, shook her head and melted back into the crowd. Banks felt perplexed. He couldn’t interpret the signals, decode the look of absolute horror he’d seen on her face at the idea of dinner with him. He wasn’t that repulsive. A simple dinner invitation. What the hell was wrong with her?
Banks gulped down the rest of his pint and headed for the door as Penny took the stage again, and he caught her eyes briefly across the crowded room. Her expression was one of puzzlement and confusion. She had clearly been unsettled by his request. Well, he thought, as he turned his back and left, red-faced, at least she didn’t still look so horrified.
The night was dark, the sky moonless but filled with stars, and Helmthorpe High Street was deserted, streetlights smudgy in the haze. Banks heard Penny start up again back inside the Dog and Gun. Another Richard Thompson song: “Never Again.” The haunting melody and desolate lyrics drifted after him across the street, fading slowly as he walked up the cobbled snicket past the old bookshop, through the graveyard and on to the footpath that would take him home, or to what passed for home these days.
The air smelled of manure and warm hay. To his right was a drystone wall beside the graveyard, and to his left a slope, terraced with lynchets, led down step by step to Gratly Beck, which he could hear roaring below him. The narrow path was unlit, but Banks knew every inch by heart. The worst that could happen was that he might step into a pile of sheep shit. Close by he could hear the high-pitched whining of winged insects.
As he walked, he continued to think about Penny Cartwright’s strange reaction to his dinner invitation. She always had been an odd one, he remembered, always a bit sharp with her tongue and too ready with the sarcasm. But this had been different – not sarcasm, not sharp, but shock, repulsion. Was it because of their age difference? He was in his early fifties, after all, and Penny was at least ten years younger. But even that didn’t explain the intensity of her reaction. She could have just smiled and said she was washing her hair. Banks liked to think he would have got the message.
The path ended at a double-barreled stile about halfway up Gratly Hill. Banks slipped through sideways and walked past the new houses to the cluster of old cottages over the bridge. Since his own house was still at the mercy of the builders, he had been renting a flat in one of the holiday properties on the lane to the left.
The locals had been good to him, as it turned out, and he’d got a fairly spacious one-bedroom flat, upper floor, with private entrance, for a very decent rent. The irony was, he realized, that it used to be the Steadman house, long ago converted into holiday flats, and it was during the Steadman case that he had first met Penny Cartwright.
Banks’s living room window had a magnificent view over the dale, north past Helmthorpe, folded in the valley bottom, up to the rich green fields dotted with sheep, and the sere, pale grass of the higher pastures, then the bare limestone outcrop of Crow Scar and the wild moors beyond. But his bedroom window looked out to the west over a small disused Sandemanian graveyard and its tiny chapel. Some of the tombstones, so old that you could scarcely read the names anymore, leaned against the wall of the house.
The Sandemanian sect, Banks had read somewhere, had been founded in the eighteenth century, separating itself from the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Its members took Holy Communion, embraced communal property ownership, practiced vegetarianism and engaged in “love feasts,” which Banks thought made them sound rather like eighteenth-century hippies.
Banks was a little pissed, he realized as he fiddled with his key in the downstairs lock. The Dog and Gun hadn’t been his first port of call that evening. He’d eaten dinner alone in the Hare and Hounds, then had a couple of pints in the Bridge. Still, what the hell, he was on holiday for another week, and he wasn’t driving. Maybe he’d even have a glass of wine or two. He was still off the whiskey, especially Laphroaig. Its distinctive taste was the only thing he could remember about the night his life nearly ended, and even at a distance the smell made him feel sick.
Could the drinking have been what put Penny off? he wondered. Had she thought he was drunk when he asked her to dinner? But Banks doubted it. He didn’t slur his works or wobble when he walked. There was nothing in his manner that suggested he’d had too much. No, it had to be something else.
He finally opened the door, walked up the stairs and unlocked the inside door, then switched on the hall light. The place felt hot and stuffy, so he went into the living room and opened the window. It didn’t help much. After he had poured himself a healthy glass of Australian Shiraz, he walked over to the telephone. A red light was flashing, indicating messages on the answering service.
As it turned out, there was only one message, and a surprising one at that: his brother, Roy. Banks wasn’t even aware that Roy knew his telephone number, and he was also certain that the card and flowers he had received from Roy in the hospital had come, in fact, from his mother.
“Alan… shit… you’re not there and I don’t have your mobile number. If you’ve got one, that is. You never were much of a one for technology, I remember. Anyway, look, this is important. Believe it or not, you’re about the only one who can help me now. There’s something… I can’t really talk about this to your answering service. It could be a matter of life and death.” He laughed harshly. “Maybe even mine. Anyway, I’ll try again later, but can you ring me back as soon as possible? I really need to talk to you. Urgently. Please.” Banks heard a buzzing noise in the background. “Someone’s at the door. I’ll have to go now. Please call. I’ll give you my mobile number, too.” Roy left his phone numbers, and that was that.
Puzzled, Banks listened to the message again. He was going to listen a third time, but he realized there was no point. He hated it when people in movies kept playing the same message over and over again and always seemed to get the tape in exactly the right spot every time. Instead, he replaced the receiver and took a sip of wine. He’d heard all he needed. Roy sounded worried, and more than a little scared. The call was timed by his answering service at 9:29 P.M. about an hour and a half ago, when Banks had been drinking in the Bridge.
Roy’s phone rang several times before an answering machine picked up: Roy’s voice in a curt, no-nonsense invitation to leave a message. Banks did so, said he’d try again later, and hung up. He tried the mobile number next but got no response there, either. There was nothing else he could do right now. Maybe Roy would ring back later, as he had said he would.
Often, Banks would spend an hour or so perched on the window seat in his bedroom looking down on the graveyard, especially on moonlit nights. He didn’t know what he was looking for – a ghost, perhaps – but the utter stillness of the tombstones and the wind soughing through the long grass seemed to give him some sort of feeling of tranquillity. Not tonight: no moon, no breeze.
The baby downstairs started crying, the way it did every night around this time. Banks turned on the TV. There wasn’t much to choose from: films, a chat show or news. He picked
