“Check them all out as best you can.”
Banks told her what Dr. Burns had said about cause and approxi-mate time of death.
“When will Dr. Wallace be available to do the postmortem?” she asked.
“Tomorrow morning, I should hope,” said Banks. Dr. Glendenning F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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had retired, in his own words, “to play golf,” about a month ago, and Banks hadn’t really seen his replacement at work, since there hadn’t been any suspicious deaths in that period. From what he could gather from his brief meetings with her, she seemed to be a dedicated professional and efficient pathologist.
“The picture on the driving license I found in the handbag matches the victim,” Banks said, “and we’ve got an address from the f lyleaf of her address book. Hayley Daniels. From Swainshead.”
“Reported missing?”
“Not yet.”
“So perhaps she wasn’t expected home,” said Gervaise. “Any idea how old she was?”
“Nineteen, according to the license.”
“Who’s following up?”
“DC Jackman’s gone to Swainshead to talk to the parents. She ought to be arriving there about now.”
“Rather her than me,” said Gervaise.
Banks wondered if she had ever been given the job of breaking bad news to a victim’s parents.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Gervaise said with a smile. “You’re thinking me, with all my nice upper- middle- class upbringing, university degrees, accelerated promotion and the rest, what would I know about it, aren’t you?”
“Not at all,” said Banks with a straight face.
“Liar.” Gervaise sipped some tea and stared at a spot just over Banks’s head. “My first week as a probationary PC,” she said, “I was working at Poole, Dorset. Mostly making tea and coffee. Friday morning they found the body of an eleven-year-old schoolboy on a tract of wasteland at the edge of town. He’d been raped and beaten to death.
Working-class family. Guess who they sent?”
Banks said nothing.
“Christ, I was sick to my stomach,” Gervaise said. “Before I went out there. Really, physically sick. I was convinced I couldn’t do it.”
“But you did?”
She looked Banks in the eye. “Of course I did. And do you know 2 2 P E T E R
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what happened? The mother went berserk. Threw a plate of eggs, beans and chips at me. Cut my head open. I had to put the bloody handcuffs on to restrain her in the end. Temporarily, of course. She calmed down eventually. And I got ten stitches.” Gervaise shook her head. “What a day.” She looked at her watch. “I suppose I’d better ring my son and tell him lunch is off.”
Banks glanced out of the window. The wind was blowing harder, and the people coming out of church were having a difficult time keeping their hats on and stopping their umbrellas from turning inside out. He thought of the body on the pile of leather. “I suppose so,” he said. “Today isn’t looking too good so far, either.” Then he went to the counter to pay.
S WA I N S H E A D, O R “The Head,” as the locals called it, started with a triangular village green which split the main road at the T-junction with the Swainsdale road. Around the green were the church, the village hall and a few shops. This, Winsome knew, was called Lower Head, and was the part most frequently visited by tourists. The Daniels Family lived in Upper Head, where the two branches of the road joined into one and separated two rows of stone cottages facing each other. Behind the cottages on both sides, the pastures rose slowly, crisscrossed by drystone walls, and finally gave way to steep fells ending in moorland.
The area was so named because the source of the river Swain was to be found in the surrounding hills. It began as a mere puddle bubbling forth from the earth, overf lowing into a thin trickle and then gaining strength as it went, finally plunging over the edge of a hanging valley at Rawley Force to cut its main course along the dale. Banks had once told Winsome about a case he’d worked on there, long before her time in Eastvale. It had taken him as far as Toronto in search of a missing expatriate. As far as Winsome knew, none of the people involved still lived in Swainshead, but those who did live there remembered the incident; it had become a part of village folklore. Years ago, people would have written songs about it, the kind of old broadsheet folk bal-lads that Banks liked so much. These days, when the newspapers and F R I E N D O F T H E D E V I L
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telly had picked the bones clean, there was nothing left for anyone to sing about.
The sound of Winsome’s car door closing shattered the silence and sent three fat crows soaring up into the sky from a gnarled tree. They wheeled against the gray clouds like black umbrellas blowing inside out.
Winsome checked the address as she walked past a pub and a couple of houses with “Bed and Breakfast” signs swinging in the wind, va-cancies cards displayed in their bay windows. Three grizzled old men leaning on their walking sticks and chatting on the old stone bridge, despite the weather, fell silent and followed her with their eyes as she walked by. Winsome supposed they didn’t often see a six-foot black woman in Swainshead.
