“Thank you,” said Banks, standing up to leave.
“There’s something else,” Edwina said, relaxing in the chair as if she had exhausted all her energy. “If you’re going to proceed with this business, then I’d advise you to be very careful indeed and to watch your back. These are not nice men you’re dealing with, and they don’t play by your rules. Believe me. I know.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Banks. “And I’ll remember that.” He shook her limp hand, said good-bye and left her to stare out at the hills, lost in memories.
6
THE EAST SIDE ESTATE HAD BEEN BUILT IN THE SIXTIES
and steadily declining ever since. Now it could give some of the Leeds or Newcastle estates a run for their money. Certain areas were a wasteland of burned-out cars and abandoned supermarket trolleys, uncontrolled dogs running rife and a population suspicious of all strangers, especially the police. Annie Cabbot had come across plenty of people there who were simply decent folk trying to make an honest living, but she had also met more than her fair share of others—dead-beat, drug-addicted or absentee parents, kids who had had little schooling and no chance of a worthwhile job, who had given up on the future by the age of thirteen or fourteen, searching only for the quick thrill of crystal meth, Ecstasy or whatever new concoction or cocktail the amateur chemists had come up with that week. And, in-creasingly, the oblivion of heroin.
A row of uniformed police officers held the crowds back at about half past ten on Wednesday evening, just after dark. Nobody was pushing or struggling; they were just curious and perhaps a little frightened. One or two troublemakers were trying to whip up a frenzy by shouting insults at the police, and someone even threw a half- brick at the ambulance crew, but the others mostly just ignored them. They were used to this sort of behavior. The streetlights created rainbow halos in the haze, and the ambulance lights spun blue in the A L L T H E C O L O R S O F D A R K N E S S
1 0 9
humid night air near the mouth of what the locals called “glue-sniffers’ ginnel.” It was more like “meth poppers’ alley” or “skunk smokers’ snicket,” these days, Annie thought. Solvents were way out of style as the underprivileged had become more aff luent and the drug prices had dropped as cheap stuff f looded the market.
One of the kingpins in the north estate dealing operation, a fifteen-year-old boy called Donny Moore, lay bleeding on a gurney from stab wounds as the paramedics hovered over him. Annie and Winsome had been called to assess the situation for Major Crimes.
“What’s the damage?” Annie asked the first paramedic, as they maneuvered the gurney into the back of the ambulance.
“Hard to tell at this point,” he said. “Three stab wounds. Chest, shoulder and abdomen.”
“Serious?”
“Stab wounds are always serious. Look,” he said, moving closer and lowering his voice. “Don’t quote me on this, but I think he’ll live.
Unless we find extensive internal bleeding or damage, it doesn’t appear as if the weapon severed any major arteries or sliced up any essential organs.”
“Thanks,” said Annie. “When will we be able to talk to him?”
“Not until tomorrow at the earliest, depending how soon they manage to stabilize him. Check with the hospital. I have to go now.”
He climbed in the back of the ambulance, shut the doors and they sped away.
The man who had reported the incident, Benjamin Paxton, paced beside his modest gray Honda, clearly anxious to get away. His wife was still sitting in the car with the windows rolled up and the doors locked. She stared straight ahead, ignoring the crowd and the police activity around her, perhaps in the hope that they would just disappear.
“I did my duty as a citizen,” said Paxton, eyeing the crowd anxiously as Annie asked him to tell her what happened while Winsome took notes. “I reported the incident and waited here till the police arrived, as I was asked to do. Isn’t that enough? My wife is really upset.
Her nerves are bad. Can’t we just go home?”
“Where’s home?”
1 1 0
P E T E R R O B I N S O N
“We’re renting a cottage near Lyndgarth.”
“So you don’t live in the area?”
“God, no! We live in South Shields. This is supposed to be a walking holiday.”
Annie glanced around at the dilapidated redbrick terrace houses and the rusted cars on blocks out front. “Not a very good place for that sort of thing, I shouldn’t have thought,” she said. “Unless you’re into urban blight.”
“Not
“What brought you down here, then?”
“We got lost, that’s all. We had dinner at a pub we read about in the guidebook and took the wrong road. We’re on our way back to Lyndgarth. We didn’t expect to run into this sort of thing in the Yorkshire Dales.”
“Which pub?”
“The Angel Inn, Kilnwick.”
Annie knew the place. They poured a decent pint of Sam Smith’s there. The story made sense. It would have been easy to get lost on the way back through Eastvale from the village of Kilnwick and end up on the East Side Estate. After all, it wasn’t as if there were a wall or a barbed-wire barricade around the place, though sometimes Annie felt there should be, given the number of tourists who complained about getting mugged there.
