the area around the body, looking for hairs, fibres, anything that the killer may have left behind. And then, when the photographs had been taken, the doctor would take a closer look at the body. In this case, he might move aside a few stones and look for obvious causes of death. There was nothing more that Banks and Gristhorpe could do until they at least had some information on the identity of the victim.
Banks gulped in the fresh, bright air as they emerged into daylight. He felt as if he had just made an ascent from the bottom of a deep, dark ocean with only seconds to spare before his oxygen ran out. Gristhorpe stood beside him and stretched, rubbing his lower back and grimacing.
“I’ll call it in,” said Banks.
Gristhorpe nodded. “Aye. And I’ll have another word with this lot over here.” He shook his head slowly. “Looks like we’ve found her.”
There was nothing to do but wait after Banks had made the call over the police radio. Gristhorpe got Marjorie Bingham’s story, then let the shocked group go home.
Banks leaned against the rough stone of the smelting mill and lit a cigarette as Gristhorpe walked carefully around the flue entrance looking down at the ground. It was quiet up there except for the occasional mournful call of a curlew gliding over the moorland, a cry that harmonized strangely with the deep sigh of the breeze blowing down the flue and ruffling the blades of grass on the hillside. The sky was the whitish blue of skim milk, and it set off the browns, greens and yellows of the desolate landscape. Beyond the mill, Banks could see the purple-grey cleft of a dried-up stream-bed cutting across the
moorland.
Gristhorpe, kneeling to peer at the grass a few yards to the right of the flue entrance, beckoned Banks over. Banks knelt beside him and looked at the rusty smear on the grass.
“Blood?” he said.
“Looks like it. If so, maybe she was killed out here and they dragged her into the flue to hide the body.”
Banks looked at the blood again. “It doesn’t look like much, though, does it?” he said. “And I’d say it’s smeared rather than spilled.”
“Aye,” said Gristhorpe, standing. “Like someone wiped off a knife or something. We’ll leave it to the SOCOs.”
The first to arrive was Peter Darby, the photographer. He came bounding up the track, fresh-faced, two cameras slung around his neck and a square metal case at his side. If it’s Gemma Scupham in there, Banks thought, he won’t look so bloody cheerful when he comes out.
Darby went to take some preliminary photographs, starting with the stained grass, on Gristhorpe’s suggestion, then the flue entrance, then carefully making his way inside. Banks could see the bulbs flash in the black hole as Darby took his pictures. When he’d finished in the flue, he took more photographs in and around the smelting mill.
About half an hour after Peter Darby, Dr Glendenning came huffing and puffing up the path.
“At least I didn’t need a bloody truss to get here this time,” he said, referring to the occasion when they had all been winched up the side of Rawley Force to get to a body in a hanging valley. He pointed towards the flue. “In there, you said?”
Gristhorpe nodded.
“Hmphh. Why the bloody hell do you keep on finding
bodies in awkward places, eh? I’m not getting any younger, you know. It’s not even my job. You could get a bloody GP to pronounce the body dead at the scene.”
Banks shrugged. “Sorry.” Glendenning was a Home Office pathologist, one of the best in the country, and both Banks and Gristhorpe knew he would be offended if they didn’t call him to the scene first.
“Aye, well …” He turned towards the entrance.
They accompanied Glendenning as he picked his way over the scree, complaining all the way, and ducked to enter the flue. Banks held the torch this time. It didn’t provide much light, but the SOCOs had been instructed to bring bottled-gas lamps as it would be impossible to get a van with a generator up the narrow track.
Glendenning knelt for a while, sniffing the air and glancing around the inside of the flue, then he touched the small hand and moved it, muttering to himself. Next he took out a mercury thermometer and held it close to the body, measuring the air temperature.
The entrance of the flue darkened and someone called out. It was Vic Manson, fingerprint expert and leader of the SOCO team. He came up the passage with a gas-lamp and soon the place was full of light. It cast eerie shadows on the slimy stone walls and gave an unreal sheen to the heap of the stones on the ground. Manson called back to one of his assistants and asked him to bring up some large plastic bags.
Then everyone stood silent, breath held, as the men started to lift the stones and place them in the bags for later forensic investigation. A few spiders scurried away and a couple of obstinate flies buzzed the men angrily then zigzagged off.
Banks leaned against the wall, his back bent into its curve. One stone, two, three… . Then a whole ami became visible.
Banks and Gristhorpe moved forward. They crouched over and looked at the small hand, then both saw the man’s wristwatch and frayed sleeve of a grey bomber-jacket. “It’s not her,” Gristhorpe whispered. “Jesus Christ, it’s not Gemma Scupham.”
Banks felt the relief, too. He had always clung to a vague hope that Gemma might still be alive, but the discovery of the body had seemed to wreck all that. Nobody else in the dale had been reported missing. And now, as Manson and his men picked stone after stone away, they looked down at what was obviously the body of a young man, complete with moustache. A young man with unusually small hands. But, Banks asked himself, if it isn’t Gemma Scupham, then who the hell is it?
Ill
Jenny darted into the Eastvale Regional Headquarters at
two o’clock, just in time for her appointment with Banks.
She always seemed to be rushing these days, she
thought, as if she were a watch a few minutes slow always
trying to catch up. She wasn’t even really late this
