In A Dry Season

the lion’s share of the CD collection. That was fair; he had collected them in the first place. They split the kitchenware, and for some obscure reason, Sandra also took the tin opener. Books and clothes were easily divided, and they sold most of the furniture. All in all, there hadn’t been a hell of a lot to show for over twenty years of marriage. Even after the sale, Banks didn’t care much where or how he lived, until a few weeks in a bed-and- breakfast place straight out of Bill Bryson changed his mind.

He began to seek isolation. When he first saw the cottage from the outside, he didn’t think much of it. The view of the dale was terrific, as was the seclusion afforded by the woods, the beck, and the ash grove between the cottage and Gratly itself, but it was a squat, ugly little place that needed a lot of work.

A typical Dales mix of limestone, grit and flag, it had originally been a farm laborer’s cottage. Carved into the gritstone doorhead was the date “ 1768” and the initials “J.H.,” probably the time it was built and the initials of the first owner. Banks wondered who J.H. was and what had become of him. Mrs. Perkins, the present owner, had lost both her two sons and her husband, and she was finally leaving to move in with her sister in Tadcaster.

Inside, the place didn’t make much more of an impression at first, either; it smelled of camphor and mold, and all the furniture and decor seemed dark and dingy. Downstairs was a living room with a stone fireplace at one end; upstairs, only two small bedrooms. The bathroom and toilet had been tacked on to the kitchen at the back, as they often were in such old houses. Plumbing was pretty primitive back in 1768.

Banks was not a believer in visions and prescience, but he would have been a fool to deny that when he walked into the kitchen that day he experienced the same feeling of well-being and of peace that he had experienced in the dream. It looked different, of course, but he knew it was the same place, the one in his dream.

What it all meant, he had no idea, except that he had to have the cottage.

He didn’t think he would be able to afford it; properties in the Dales were fetching astronomical prices. But fortune and human eccentricity proved to be on his side for once. Mrs. Perkins had no love whatsoever for the holiday-cottage trade and no particular greed for mere money. She wanted to sell to someone who would actually live in the cottage. As soon as she found out that Banks was looking for just such a place, and that his name was the same as her maiden name, the deal was as good as done. The only black mark against Banks was that he wasn’t born a Yorkshireman, but she took to him anyway, convinced they were related, and she even flirted with him in that way some old ladies have.

When she let him have the place for ?50,000, probably about half of what she could have got, telling him it would be enough to see her to her grave, Dimmoch, the estate agent, groaned and shook his head in disbelief. Afterward, Banks always had the impression that Dimmoch suspected him of exerting undue pressure on Mrs. Perkins.

The cottage became Banks’s long-term project – his therapy, his refuge and, he hoped, his salvation. In an odd way he felt working on the cottage was like working on himself. Both needed renovating, and both had a long way to go. It was all new to him; he had never had the faintest interest in DIY or gardening before; nor had he been much inclined to self-analysis or introspection. But somehow he had lost his way over the past year, and he wanted to find a new one; he had also lost something of himself, and he wanted to know what it was. So far, he had fitted some pine cupboards in the kitchen, like the ones in his dream, installed a shower unit to replace the claw-footed Victorian bathtub, and painted the living room. It hadn’t kept the depression away completely, but made it more manageable; at least he always managed to drag himself out of bed in the morning now, even if he didn’t always view the day ahead with any real relish.

A night bird called out far in the distance – a broken, eerie cry, as if perhaps some predator was threatening its nest. Banks stubbed out his cigarette and went back inside. As he got ready for bed, he thought of the skeletal hand, possibly human; he thought of DS Cabbot, definitely human; he thought of Hobb’s End, that lost, ruined village suddenly risen from the depths with its secrets; and somewhere in his mind, in the darkness way beyond the realms of logic and reason, he heard an echo, a click, felt something intangible connect across the years.

THREE

Banks watched from the edge of the woods the next morning as the SOCOs slowly lifted the skeleton from its muddy grave under the expert direction of John Webb.

First, they had to take down the wall next to which the bones were buried, then they made a trench around the area and dug down until the bones were exposed, about three feet below the surface. Next, they slipped a thin sheet of metal into the earth under the bones, and finally they got it in place, ready to lift out.

The bones came up on the metal sheet, still packed in earth, and four SOCO pallbearers carried it up the slope, where they laid it out on the grass at Banks’s feet like a burnt offering. It was just eleven, and DS Cabbot still hadn’t shown up. Banks had already talked to Adam Kelly, who hadn’t been able to add anything to his previous statement.

Adam was still shaken, but Banks sensed a resilience in him that he had also possessed as an early adolescent. Banks, too, had loved playing in derelict houses, of which there had been plenty in post-war Peterborough. The worst he had ever come away with was a scraped knee, but a pupil from the girls’ school had been killed by a falling rafter, so he knew how dangerous they could be. The council was always boarding them up. Anyway, Adam’s little adventure had done no lasting harm, and it would give him stories to tell well into the school term. He would enjoy celebrity status of a kind among his pals for a while.

Banks stared at the filthy, twisted shape at his feet. It hardly looked human. The bones had taken on the muddy brown color of the earth they had lain in for so long; they were also crusted with dark, grungy muck. It stuck to the ribs the way a hearty stew was supposed to do, and it clung to various joints, clogging the cavities and crevices. The skull looked full of it – mud in the mouth, the nose, the eye sockets – and some of the long bones looked like old rusted metal pipes that had been underground for years.

The sight of it made Banks feel vaguely sick. He had seen much worse without throwing up, of course – at least there were no gaping red holes, no spilled intestines, no legs cut off at the thighs, skin riding up over the raw edges like a tight skirt – but he hadn’t seen much uglier.

The SOCOs had already photographed the skeleton during every stage of its excavation, and once they had finished carrying it up the hill they went back down and started their detailed search of the area, digging deeper and farther afield, leaving John Webb to give it a poke here and a scrape there. Webb also searched through the dirt for any objects that had been buried at the same time – buttons, jewelry, that sort of thing.

Banks leaned back against a tree trunk, as if on sentry duty, kept his nausea under control and watched Webb work. He was tired; he had not slept well after his late-night musings. Most of the night he had tossed and turned, waking up often from fragments of nightmares that scuttled off into dark corners when he woke, like cockroaches when you turn on the light. The morning heat made him drowsy. Giving in to the feeling for a moment, he closed his eyes and rested his head on the tree. He could feel the rough bark against his crown, and the sunlight made kaleidoscopic patterns behind his eyelids. He was at the edge of sleep when he heard a rustling behind him, then a voice.

“Morning, sir. Rough night?”

“Something like that,” said Banks, moving away from the tree trunk.

DS Cabbot stared down at the bones. “So this is what we all come to in the end, is it?” She didn’t sound particularly concerned about it; no more troubled than she seemed about turning up so late.

“Any luck?” Banks asked.

“That’s what took me so long. The university year hasn’t started yet and a lot of profs are still away on holiday, or busy running research projects overseas. Anyway, I’ve tracked down a Dr. Ioan Williams, University of Leeds. He’s a physical anthropologist with a fair bit of experience in forensic work. He sounded pretty excited by what we’ve found. Must be having a dull summer.”

“How quickly can he get to it?”

“He said if we could get the remains to the university lab as soon as possible, he’d have his assistants clean them up, then he’d manage a quick look by early evening. Only a preliminary look, mind you.”

“Good,” said Banks. “The sooner we know what we’re dealing with here, the better.”

If the skeleton had been lying there for a hundred years or more, the investigation wouldn’t really be worth