police time instead. He’ll do six months with any
luck.”
“The searchers turn up anything yet?” Banks asked.
Gristhorpe shook his head. “They’re doing the area east of the estate now, past the railway tracks. We’ve taken on a few civilian volunteers. And we’ve interviewed all the known local child-molesters. Nothing there.”
At Fortford, Banks turned left by the pub and passed between the Roman fort and the village green.
“Anything on the car?” Gristhorpe asked.
After his visit to Brenda Scupham the previous afternoon, Banks had caught up with his paperwork on the case, helped Susan with the house-to-house and Richmond check the garages and car-rental agencies.
“Not so far. We’ve got through most of the garages and agencies. Phil’s still at it.”
“Well, maybe it was their own car, after all,” said Gristhorpe. “They’ve vanished into thin air, Alan. How can they do that?”
“Either very clever or very lucky, I suppose. No one on the estate was very communicative, either,” he went
on. “I only did a couple of streets with Susan, but she said the others were no different. And she had another chat with that Mr Carter at number sixteen. Waste of time, she said. He just wanted to talk about Dunkirk. People are scared, you know, even when we show them our warrant cards.”
“I don’t blame them,” said Gristhorpe.
“But I reckon if it had happened to someone else around there, they’d speak up now.”
“You never know with people, Alan. Remember the old Yorkshire saying, ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk.’ “
Banks laughed. At the junction in Relton, he turned right. A slow-moving tractor in front pulled over to the side and gave him just enough space to squeeze by. “I’ve been on the phone to Belfast, too,” he added. “The lads over there spent most of yesterday with Terry Garswood, Gemma’s father, and they’re certain he had nothing to do with it. For a start, he was on duty that day and couldn’t have got away without someone noticing, and apparently he had neither the inclination nor the money to hire someone else to steal her for him.”
“Well, look on the bright side,” said Gristhorpe. “At least that’s one less lead to follow. There it is.” He pointed out of the car window. “Pull in here.”
They were on Mortsett Lane, about halfway between Relton and Gratly, below the looming bulk of Tetchley Fell. Banks pulled up on the gravelled lay-by next to a Range Rover and looked at the narrow track. There was no way you could get a car up there, he thought. The stony path was only about three feet wide, and it was bordered by small boulders and chips of flint that would play havoc with tires. Ahead, he could just make out the partially collapsed roof of the smelting mill over the rise.
He had seen the place before, but from a different perspective. Looking down from the Roman road that cut
diagonally across the fell, he had been impressed by the range of colour, from pale yellow to dark green, purple and grey, and by the flue hugging the hillside like a long stone tunnel. Now, as they neared the mill, all he could see was the murky opening to his left and the group of people huddled together by the mill to his right.
“Which one of you is Mr Bingham?” Gristhorpe asked, after he had introduced Banks and himself.
“I am,” said a countryish type, in gear far too expensive and inappropriate for the short walk. “My wife, Marjorie, found the … er … Well, I remembered there was a phonebox back down on the road.”
Gristhorpe nodded and turned to the woman. “Did you disturb anything?”
She shook her head. “No. I never touched … I … When I saw the hand I ran back. And the flies … Oh, my God … the flies …”
Her husband took her hand and she buried her face in his shoulder. The other couple looked on sadly, the man with a grim set to his mouth and the woman stroking her child’s golden hair. Banks noticed a head over her shoulder, a sleeping baby in a backpack.
Gristhorpe turned to Banks. “Shall we?”
Banks nodded and followed him over the scree. They had to walk carefully, as many of the stones wobbled under them. Finally, they managed to scrabble to the gloomy semi-circle and peer inside. Gristhorpe brought the torch out of his pocket and shone it ahead. They could easily see the heap that Marjorie Bingham had mentioned, but couldn’t pick out any details from so far away. Gristhorpe had to bend almost double to walk, which made it very difficult to negotiate a path through the rubble that littered the flue’s floor. Banks, being a little shorter, found it easier. But he felt uncomfortable.
He had never liked caves; they always seemed to bring
out a latent sense of claustrophobia. Once he and Sandra had visited Ingleton and gone in the caves there. When he had to stoop and almost crawl on his belly to get under a low overhang, he had felt the weight of the mountain pressing on his back and had to struggle to keep his breathing regular. The flue wasn’t as bad as that, but he could still feel the heavy darkness pushing at him from all sides.
Gristhorpe walked a few feet behind him with the torch. Its beam danced over lead-stained stones, which glistened here and there as if snails had left their slimy tracks. They went as cautiously as they could in order not to destroy any forensic evidence, but it was impossible to pick a narrow path through the rubble of the flue. Finally, they stood close enough, and Gristhorpe’s torch lit on a small hand raised from a heap of rocks. They could see nothing else of the body, as it had been entirely covered by stones.
As they stood and looked at the hand, a gust of wind blew and made a low moaning sound in the flue like someone blowing over the lip of a bottle. Gristhorpe turned off the torch and they headed back for the entrance. They had probably disturbed too much already, but they had to verify that there was indeed a body on the site. So often people simply thought they had found a corpse, and the truth turned out to be different. Now they had to follow procedure.
First they would call the police surgeon to ascertain that the body was indeed dead. No matter how obvious it might appear, no matter even if the body is decapitated or chopped into a dozen pieces, it is not dead until a qualified doctor says it is.
Then the SOCO team would arrive and mark off the area with their white plastic tape. It might not seem necessary in such an isolated place, but the searching of a
crime scene was a very serious business, and there were guidelines to follow. With Vic Manson in charge, they would take photographs and search
