Brenda steadied herself on the back of the small chair by Gemma’s desk. She felt dizzy, her skin cold and clammy, as if she had had too much to drink and the world was spinning fast. “Where can I find her?” she asked. “Where do I look? Tell me, where do I look?”
g
I
By Tuesday morning, the searchers had turned up nothing
buried in the garden of the holiday cottage; nor had
anything of interest been discovered on the moors where
Gemma’s clothing had been found. Gristhorpe sat in his
office going over the paperwork, waiting to hear from
forensics about Parkinson’s car. Outside, mucky clouds,
like balls of black wool, started to attack from the west.
It was close to twelve when Vic Manson called.
“What did you find?” Gristhorpe asked.
“Plenty. The girl was in there all right. We found her prints. Windows, back of the front seat, all over. I checked them with the ones on file, and they match.”
“Good work, Vic.”
“And we found yellow fibres.”
“The dungarees?”
“Looks like it. I’m still waiting for the confirmation.”
“Anything else?”
“A bit of black hair-dye smeared on the driver’s headrest. Soil and gravel in the wheels, could have come from just about anywhere locally. Lay-by, track, drive, quarry.”
“No particular kind of limestone deposit you only find
177
on Aldington Edge, or anything like that?”
Manson laughed. “Sorry, no. Look, remember that whitish powder I told you about on the kid’s dungarees? It’s a lime solution, most likely whitewash.”
“Where from?”
“Same as the soil and gravel, it could have come from anywhere, really. A pub wall, a cellar, outhouse.”
“You can’t be more specific?”
“Whitewash is whitewash. Now if you’ll kindly get off the bloody phone and let me get on with the confirmations, we’ll have a pile of stuff that just might stand up in court when you catch the bastards.”
“All right, all right. And Vic?”
“Yes.”
“I’m eternally grateful.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Gristhorpe hung up. He no longer had to sit around waiting for the phone to ring. There were things to do: question Parkinson again, and his neighbours; get in touch with the press and television. They could run this on “Crimewatch.” And where had he seen whitewash recently? Calling for Richmond on his way, he swept down the corridor towards the stairs.
II
Why was it, Banks thought, as he sat in Corrigan’s Bar
and Grill on York Road near the bus station, that so
many people gravitated towards these trendy, renovated
pubs? What on earth was wrong with a down-to-earth,
honest-to-goodness old pub? Just look at Le Bistro, that
place he had met Jenny last week. All coral pink tablecloths,
long-stemmed wine glasses and stiff napkins.
And now this: eighteenth-century Yorkshire translated
almost overnight into twentieth-century New York, complete with booths, brass rails, square Formica-top tables and waitresses who might bustle in New York, but in Yorkshire moved at their normal couldn’t-care-less pace. At least some things didn’t change.
And then there was the menu: a large, thin laminated card of bold, handwritten items with outrageous prices. Burgers, of course, club sandwiches, corned beef on rye (and they didn’t mean Fray Bentos), and such delights for dessert as raspberry cheesecake, pecan pie and frozen yoghurt. All to the accompaniment (not too loud, thank the Lord) of Euro-pop.
Maybe he was getting conservative since the move to Yorkshire, he wondered. Certainly in London, Sandra and he had happily embraced the changes that seemed to happen so fast from the sixties on, delighted in the varieties of food and ambience available. But somehow here, in a town with a cobbled market square, ancient cross, Norman church and excavated pre-Roman ruins, so close to the timeless, glacier-carved dales and towering fells with their jagged limestone edges and criss-cross dry stone walls, the phoney American theme and fashionable food seemed an affront.
The beer was a problem, too, just as it was in Le Bistro. Here was no Theakston’s bitter, no Old Peculier, no
