what I saw. I’ve always hoped so. All the same, it’s been weighing on my mind.
Eyre: Take your time.
Caller: Thank you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be doing this.
Eyre: There’s no need to worry. You’re doing the right thing. I’m not going to hang up on you. This is all in strict confidence.
Caller: Well, you say that, and I’m sure you’re trained about confidentiality. But how can I be sure? This is serious. I don’t even think I ought to be talking to you at all. It’s not right. Oh God, all this time and worry and I’m still not thinking straight.
Eyre: One thing at a time. Can you just give me a few details? If you could just tell me who you are…
Caller: I can’t give my name. I’m sorry, I really am, but I don’t want to get involved, not any more than I am already. I shouldn’t even be making this call.
Eyre: You have some information about a crime, a crime that wasn’t solved?
Caller: Yes, a girl was killed here in Brackdale. Murdered. Her name was Gabrielle.
Eyre: When was this?
Caller: Seven years ago, it must be. You’ll have the records, anyway. The papers were full of it. The thing is, your people thought they knew who did it.
Eyre: Someone was arrested?
Caller: No, he died. An accident, I think, but some folk say he killed himself out of shame. Couldn’t live with the guilt.
Eyre: What was his name?
Caller: Barrie, Barrie Gilpin.
Eyre: And you say that Barrie Gilpin…
Caller: Everyone blamed him, said he’d murdered her because he was a pervert. But he wasn’t, he was kind, he just had problems, that’s all. It was so — so unfair. What I saw…oh God, I felt so terrible when I…
Eyre: Please don’t upset yourself. It’s all right, it’s not…
Caller: I’m sorry. I just can’t do this.
Eyre: Don’t cry, madam. You can take a break, we could speak later on, when you’ve had a chance to calm down. Please, would you just tell me this. How can I get back to you?
Call terminated.
‘Now you see why I thought you’d want to know straight away?’ Nick asked. ‘I remember you telling me how Ben Kind obsessed about the case. He didn’t buy the official line, that Gilpin was responsible.’
Hannah nodded. ‘He always said that our job in a murder case is to see justice done for the victim. It plagued him like an ulcer, the thought that he’d failed her.’
‘He was waiting for a call like that.’
‘One piece of information, that’s what he reckoned, we just need one little titbit of evidence to show that Barrie Gilpin couldn’t have been the culprit. Marc and I were talking about Barrie only the other night. And now a call has come, but Ben wasn’t here to take it. Question is — is this the call? Or just a red herring?’
‘What do you make of what the woman has to tell us? She doesn’t exactly give much away.’
‘She says here in Brackdale, which suggests she lives there. If Maggie’s note is accurate.’
‘It will be. And we’re told that the woman saw something.’
‘Which she may have misinterpreted. Or invented.’
‘Okay, it’s not much, but Maggie thought…’
‘She was right to make the note. What else does she have to say? You and I both know that most anonymous callers are just out to cause problems. Either for us or someone they have a grudge against.’
‘Maggie said the woman seemed genuine. Genuinely worried, anyway.’
‘Age?’
‘Maggie thought thirty-something. Flustered, but then plenty of people are when they call us. She spoke slowly, the sentences were nervous and broken. At least it helped Maggie to make a good note.’
‘She did well. Even so, the woman couldn’t have given us much less to go on.’
‘True.’ Nick nodded at the note. ‘Bin?’
‘Of course not. Listen, I’m not jumping to any conclusions. This may be a dead-end, probably is. Fingers crossed, she’ll ring again. Brief the team, just in case anyone else answers the phone if she rings back.’
‘Already done.’
‘And we need to dig out the old files on the case, see whether anything jumps out at us.’
‘I asked Maggie to set the wheels in motion. You’ll have them on your desk first thing tomorrow.’
‘You can read my mind.’
He winked at her. ‘Spooky, huh?’
She grinned. ‘Scary.’
After Nick had left, Hannah tried to finish entering up her replies to a diversity monitoring questionnaire. Impossible: the memory of Gabrielle Anders’ dead face blotted out everything else. She had been pretty once, even her passport photograph couldn’t conceal that, but someone had hated her enough to destroy her looks as well as her life.
Gabrielle had been killed a fortnight after Hannah’s promotion to sergeant. It was the first time she’d ever worked with Ben Kind on a murder. Until then, she hadn’t known him well. People tended to be wary of him and although she’d been advised to keep her distance, she couldn’t help being intrigued by his reputation. Everyone reckoned he was a good cop, tough and relentlessly honest. Too honest, Hannah decided, to make it right to the top. You needed to be a bit of a diplomat if you wanted to build a brilliant career. Professional competence could only take you so far. His Achilles heel was that single-minded focus on catching criminals. It didn’t allow time for winning friends or influencing people. Worse, he was famous for not suffering fools gladly, even if the fool in question was responsible for his annual performance review.
She would never forget that first day up by the Sacrifice Stone. The picture remained as vivid in her mind as a snapshot stuck down in an album, and at the same time as unreal as a dream. Even by mid-afternoon, the mist had not quite cleared. She remembered the cold bite of the winter on her cheeks as she patrolled the crime scene perimeter, watching scenes of crime officers in their white suits, moving along the slope of the fell like ghosts. She had to watch every muddy step. The downpour was washing traces of the crime away and yet the gathering of evidence could not be rushed, lest something was missed. Walkietalkies hummed, above the valley a helicopter droned. Whenever the photographer’s flashbulb popped, she shut her eyes, but each time she opened them again, the corpse was still there. Anger stabbed her like a knife in the ribs, at the sight of the naked limbs splayed across the top of the boulder. The victim’s face had been hacked at and her head almost severed at the neck and now the poor creature was exposed to all these prying eyes. She was being photographed and probed and measured while her sightless eyes stared up to the heavens. No one treated her any more as a living and breathing human being. She had become an exhibit, a problem to be solved.
It didn’t take the forensic specialists long to break the news that the victim hadn’t died here. Trouble was, this information provoked more questions than it answered. Most murderers move their victims for the purpose of concealing their crime. Not this one. If fell-walkers hadn’t been deterred by rain and the thick morning mist, Gabrielle’s body would have been found even sooner. So what was the purpose of bringing her here? A symbolic ritual? An ironic nod to the myths of a godless past?
Hannah remembered wild conjectures jumping in her brain like fire crackers. She knew better than to voice her ideas. Ben Kind was a Puritan amongst detectives, addicted to facts and scathing about enthusiasts who got off on theories. Speculation was a dangerous self-indulgence in his book, draining an investigation of time and resources, leeching all the energy out of it. No one ever solved a crime by guesswork. You might as well hire a psychic or peer into a crystal ball.
As Hannah exchanged a word with the DC recording the scene on video, she kept an eye on Ben Kind. He was standing on the fell-side, arms out-stretched, directing his team to their tasks as though conducting an orchestra. Nothing about his gestures was flamboyant, but his self-assurance was unmistakable. She didn’t see anyone to whom he gave an order hesitate or ask questions. They did what they were told, not out of fear, nor even out of unthinking self-discipline, but because they knew that he was very good at his job. Although he might not have made it quite to the top of the greasy pole, Ben Kind commanded loyalty from those who liked him and respect
