“Where did you find the knife?” Burgess asked.
“Up on t’moor, Eastvale way.”
“Can you show us?”
“Aye.” Crocker’s face creased into a sly smile. “It’s a bit on a hike, though.
And tha can’t take thy car.”
Burgess looked at Banks. “Well,” he said, “it’s your part of the country. You’re the nature-boy. Why don’t you go up the moor with Mr Crocker here, and I’ll phone the station to send a car for me?”
Yes, Banks thought, and you’ll have another pint of Watney’s while you’re warming your hands in front of the fire.
133
Banks nodded. “I’d get that knife straight to the lab if I were you,” he said.
“If you send it through normal channels they’ll take days to get the tests done.
Ask for Vic Manson. If he’s got a spare moment he’ll dust it for prints and persuade one of the lads to try for blood-typing. It’s been exposed to the elements a bit, but we might still get something from it.”
“Sounds good,” Burgess said. “Where is this lab?”
“Just outside Wetherby. You can ask the driver to take you straight there.”
Burgess went over to the phone while Banks and Crocker drank off their pints of Black Sheep bitter and set off.
They climbed a stile at the eastern end of Mortsett Lane and set off over open moorland. The tussocks of moor grass, interspersed with patches of heather and sphagnum, made walking difficult for Banks. Crocker, always ahead, seemed to float over the top of it like a hovercraft. The higher they climbed, the harsher and stronger the wind became.
Banks wasn’t dressed for the moors, either, and his shoes were soon mud-caked and worse. At least he was wearing his warm sheepskin-lined coat. Though the slope wasn’t steep, it was unrelenting, and he soon got out of breath. Despite the cold wind against his face, he was sweating.
At last, the ground flattened out into high moorland. Crocker stopped and waited with a smile for Banks to catch up.
“By heck, lad, what’d tha do if tha ‘ad to chase after a villain?”
“Luckily, it doesn’t happen often,” Banks wheezed.
“Aye. Well, this is where I found it. Just down there in t’grass.” He pointed with his crook. Banks bent and poked around among the sods. There was nothing to indicate the knife had been there.
“It looks like someone just threw it there,” he said.
Crocker nodded. “It would’ve been easy enough to hide,” he said. “Plenty of rocks to stuff it under. He could’ve even buried it if he’d wanted.”
“But he didn’t. So whoever it was must have panicked, perhaps, and just tossed it away.”
“Tha should know.”
Banks looked around. The spot was about two miles from Eastvale; the jagged castle battlements were just visible in the 134
distance, down in the hollow where the town lay. In the opposite direction, also about two miles away, he could see the house and outbuildings of Maggie’s Farm.
It looked like the knife had been thrown away on the wild moorland about halfway or more on a direct line between Eastvale and the farm. If someone from the farm had escaped arrest or injury at the demo, it would have been a natural direction in which to run home. That meant Paul or Zoe, as Rick and Seth had been arrested and searched. It could even have been the woman, Mara, who might have been lying about staying home all evening.
On the other hand, anyone could have come up there in the past few days and thrown the knife away. That seemed much less likely, though, as it was a poor method of disposal, more spontaneous than planned. Certainly it seemed to make mincemeat of one of Banks’s theories-that a fellow policeman might have committed the murder. Again, the finger seemed to be pointing at Maggie’s Farm.
Banks pulled the sheepskin collar tight around his neck and screwed up his eyes to keep the tears from forming. No wonder Crocker’s eyes were hooded almost shut. There was nothing more to be done up here, he decided, but he would have to mark the spot in some way.
“Could you find this place again?” he asked.
” ‘Course,” the shepherd answered.
Banks couldn’t see how; there was nothing to distinguish it from any other spot of moorland. Still, it was Crocker’s job to be familiar with every square inch of his territory.
He nodded. “Right. We may have to get a few men up here to make a more thorough search. Where can I get in touch with you?”
“I live in Mortsett.” Crocker gave him the address.
“Are you coming back down?”
“Nay. More ewes to fetch in. It’s lambing season, tha knows.”
“Yes, well, thanks again for your time.”
