had cooked so well. Then he spent the rest of the evening in his room reading.
And now, as he tried to match the words to his thoughts and feelings, as he always did in prayer, he found he couldn’t. The picture of the body kept coming back, tearing aside the image of God that he had retained from childhood: an old man with a long white beard sitting on a cloud with a ledger on his lap. Suddenly, the smell was in his nostrils again; it was like trying to breathe at the bottom of a warm sewer. And he saw again the bloody maggot-infested pulp that had once been a face, the white shirt rippling with corruption, the whole thing rising and falling in an obscene parody of breathing.
He tried to force his mind back to the prayer but couldn’t. Hoping the Lord would understand and give him the comfort he needed, he gave up, put his glasses on the table and got into bed.
On the edge of sleep, he was able to reconstruct the sequence of events in his mind. At the time, he had been too distraught, too confused to notice anything. And very soon his head had been spinning with the drink. But he remembered bursting into the pub and asking for help. He remembered how Sam Greenock and the others at the table had calmed him down and suggested what he should do. But there was something else, something wrong. It was just a vague feeling. He couldn’t quite bring it to consciousness before sleep took him.
3
ONE
‘What is it?’ Banks asked, examining the faded slip of paper that Sergeant Hatchley had dropped on the desk in front of him.
‘Forensic said it’s some kind of receipt from a till,’ Hatchley explained. ‘You know, one of those bits of paper they give you when you buy something. People usually just drop them on the floor or shove them in their pockets and forget about them. They found it in his right trouser pocket. It’d been there long enough to go through the washer once or twice, but you know what bloody wizards they are in the lab.’
Banks knew. He had little faith in forensic work as a means of catching criminals, but the boffins knew their stuff when it came to identification and gathering evidence. Their lab was just outside Wetherby, and Gristhorpe must have put a ‘rush’ on this job to get the results back to Eastvale so quickly. The body had been discovered only the previous afternoon, and it was still soaking in a Lysol bath.
Banks looked closely again at the slip, then turned to its accompanying transcription. The original had been too faint to read, but forensic had treated it with chemicals and copied out the message exactly:
‘Wendy’s,’ Banks said. ‘That’s a burger chain. There’s a few branches in London. Look at those prices, though.’
Hatchley shrugged. ‘If it was in London…’
‘Come on! Even in London you don’t pay two pounds sixty-nine just for a bloody hamburger. At least not at Wendy’s you don’t. You don’t pay eighty-five pence for a Coke, either. What does that tax work out at?’
Hatchley took out his pocket calculator and struggled with the figures. ‘Eight per cent,’ he announced finally.
‘Hmm. That’s an odd amount. You don’t pay eight per cent VAT on food in England.’
‘I suppose it’s an American company,’ Hatchley suggested, ‘if they sell hamburgers?’
‘You mean our man’s an American?’
‘Or he could have just come back from a trip there.’
‘He could have. But that’d make it a bit soon for another holiday, wouldn’t it? Unless he was a businessman. What about the labels on his clothes?’
‘Torn off,’ Hatchley said. ‘Trousers and underpants seem to be ordinary Marks and Sparks cotton and polyester. Same with the shirt. The boots were Army and Navy. They could have been bought at any of their branches.’
Banks tapped his ballpoint on the edge of the desk. ‘Why is it that somebody doesn’t want us to know who he is or where he’s from?’
‘Maybe because if we knew that we’d have a good idea who the killer was.’
‘So the quicker we identify the body, the better our chances. Whoever did it was obviously counting on no one finding it for months, then being unable to identify it.’ Banks sipped some lukewarm coffee and pulled a face. ‘But we’ve got a lead.’ He tapped the receipt. ‘I want to know where this Wendy’s is located. It shouldn’t take you long. There’s a store code to go on.’
‘Where do I go for that kind of information?’ Hatchley asked.
‘Bloody hell!’ Banks said. ‘You’re a detective. At least I hope you are. Start detecting. First, I’d suggest you call Wendy’s UK office. It’s going to be a couple of days before we get anything from Glendenning and Vic Manson, so let’s use every break we get. Did Richmond come up with anything from missing persons?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I suppose our corpse is still supposed to be on holiday then, if no one’s reported him missing. And if he’s not English it could be ages before he gets into the files. Check the hotels and guest houses in the area and see if any Americans have registered there lately. If they have, try and track them down.’
Dismissed, Hatchley went to find Richmond, to whom, Banks knew, he would pass on as much of the load as possible. Still, he reasoned, the sergeant’s work was solid enough once he built up a bit of momentum, and the pressure would serve as a test of Richmond’s mettle.
Since passing his computer course with flying colours, the young detective constable looked all set for promotion. That would cause problems with Hatchley though. There was no way, Banks reflected, that the sergeant could be expected to work with Richmond at equal rank. Things had been bad enough when Banks came from the Metropolitan force to fill the position Hatchley had set his own sights on. And Hatchley was destined to stay a sergeant; he didn’t have the extra edge needed to make inspector, as Richmond did.
Grateful that promotion was not his decision, Banks glanced at his watch and headed for the car. Neil Fellowes was waiting in Swainshead, and the poor sod had already had to arrange for one extra day off work.
TWO
As he drove along the dale, Banks marvelled at how familiar some of its landmarks had become: the small drumlin with its four sick elms all leaning to the right like an image in one of those Chinese watercolours that Sandra, his wife, liked so much; the quiet village of Fortford with the foundations of a Roman fort laid bare on a hillock by the green; the busy main street of Helmthorpe, Swainsdale’s largest village; and above Helmthorpe, the long limestone edge of Crow Scar gleaming in the sun.
The Kinks sang ‘Lola’, and Banks tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music as he drove. Though he swore to Sandra that he still loved opera, much to her delight he hadn’t played any lately. She had approved of his recent flirtation with the blues, and now he seemed to be going through a nostalgic phase for the music he had listened to during his last days at school and first year at London Polytechnic: that idyllic halcyon period when he hadn’t known what to do with his life and hadn’t much cared.
It was also the year he had met Sandra, and the music brought it all back: winter evenings drinking cheap wine and making love in his draughty Notting Hill bedsit listening to John Martyn or Nick Drake; summer boat trips for picnics in Greenwich Park, lying in the sun below Wren’s observatory looking down on the gleaming palace, the Thames and London spread out to the west, the Beatles, Donovan, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones on the radio… All gone now, or almost all. He had lost interest in pop music shortly after the Beatles split up and the glitter boys took over the scene in the early 1970s, but the old songs still worked their magic on him.
He lit a cigarette and rolled down the window. It felt good to be on his own in his own car again. Much as he loved the superintendent, Banks was glad that Gristhorpe had reverted to his usual role of planner and coordinator. Now he could smoke and listen to music as he drove.
More important still, he liked working alone, without the feeling that someone was always looking over his shoulder. It was easy enough to deal with Hatchley and Richmond, but with a superior heading the field investigation, it was difficult to avoid the sensation of being under constant scrutiny. That had been another reason for leaving London - too many chiefs - and for pinning his hopes on the Eastvale job after a preliminary chat with Superintendent Gristhorpe about the way he liked to run things.
Banks turned right at the Swainshead junction and parked his car in one of the spaces outside the White Rose. As he crossed the bridge, the old men stopped talking and he felt their eyes boring holes into his back as he walked down to the Greenock Guest House.
Though the door was open, he rang the bell. A young woman came rushing to answer it. She had a slender dancer’s body, but Banks also noticed an endearing awkwardness, a lack of self- consciousness about her movements that made her seem even more attractive. She stood before him drying her
