Cold Is The Grave

man.

Shortly after, Banks moved to London and went to college there. A year or two after that, and several casual relationships later, he met Sandra. After a rocky few months at the start, when he realized he wanted her so much he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else being with her, he saw that if he played his cards right, nobody else but him was going to be, and for the next twenty years or so he had very few problems with jealousy. Then she left him and Sean came on the scene, or vice versa. Now this with Annie. He was beginning to feel like a sex-obsessed, acne-plagued teenager again, and he didn’t like it at all.

Though he couldn’t play it, Banks had Brian’s CD on the passenger seat beside him, feeling pride every time he managed to break off his miserable thoughts and look down to see his son’s face on the cover. The marriage might have ended badly, but at least it had produced Brian and Tracy, Banks told himself, and the world was a better place for having them in it. He picked up the CD and dashed through the rain with it into the station. Once in his office, he set it on his desk, hoping that anyone who dropped by would ask about it.

Because Tuesday had been a day of paperwork, phonework and legwork, Banks was hoping some of it would pay off today. Teams of uniformed and plainclothes officers had been sent out with photos of Gregory Manners, Andrew Handley, Jamie Gilbert and Barry Clough. If any of those four had been up to no good in the Eastvale area over the past month or so, then someone would recognize them. Also, as he had looked at the cover of the Jimson Weed CD and thought about some of the things he had discovered lately, a number of disparate strands had started to come together, and he made an appointment to have lunch at half past one in the Queen’s Arms with Granville Baird, of North Yorkshire Trading Standards.

Annie was surprised to find herself feeling so good on Wednesday morning, the best she’d felt in a long time. She had awakened after a long, deep and dreamless sleep feeling that old calm, had done her meditation and yoga and seemed to be getting back in the groove. Agitated voices still muttered in the distance of her mind and talons raked at the raw edges of her emotions, but even so, she felt much better. All would be well.

She wondered if it was anything to do with Dalton’s having gone back to Newcastle and decided that was only partly it. Certainly it was a blessing not to have him around the place, constantly reminding her, whether he intended to or not, of that terrible night two years ago. In a way, though, she had exorcised all that by confronting him by the swing bridge. Anyway, she didn’t intend to dwell on why she was feeling so good. One thing she had learned from her meditation was that sometimes it’s best to let go, simply to accept the feelings you have and ride with them.

Banks had been cool and distant toward her since their blowup on Monday afternoon, and, while a little warmth wouldn’t go amiss, that suited her perfectly well at the moment, because all she wanted to do was get on with the job.

And early that Wednesday afternoon, she was doing exactly that, heading for Scarlea House. The desk clerk there had said he recognized Barry Clough’s photograph when one of the DCs turned up on the doorstep showing it around.

It was a dull afternoon, and Annie needed to turn her headlights on. The heavy gray cloud was so low it seemed to rest on top of Fremlington Hill, a high limestone scar, or “edge,” which curved like bared teeth around the junction of Swainsdale and the smaller Arkbeckdale, which ran northwest.

She drove through sleepy Lyndgarth, with its village green like a handkerchief flapping in the wind, its chapel, church and three pubs. Smoke drifted from the chimneys and lost itself in the clouds like her thoughts when she meditated. She passed through the remote hamlet of Longbridge, a name most found funny as it had the smallest, shortest bridge in the dale. She remembered it was supposed to be famous because someone drove over it in the opening credits of a television program, but that had been before her time up north. Not a soul stirred; the hamlet looked deserted, its shop closed, rough stone cottages shut up. Only a glimmer of light from the pub showed that anyone lived there at all. It was an eerie feeling, especially in the half-light. Annie felt that if she got out of her car and walked around she would find everything in order – meals on the table, today’s newspapers lying open, kettles boiling on the cookers – and nobody there, like on the Marie Celeste.

Scarlea House loomed ahead, a huge, dark Gothic limestone pile. None of the windows seemed to have any curtains. It stood on a slight rise at the end of a broad gravel drive, and in the weak light, against the backdrop of the rising, dull-green daleside, it looked like a vampire’s castle from an old horror film. All that was needed to complete the effect was a few flickers of lightning and the distant rumble of thunder. But when Annie pulled up outside and turned off her engine, everything was silent apart from the occasional bird call and the burbling of the River Arkbeck on its way to join the Swain along the valley bottom.

Christ, Annie, she thought, you’re about to enter one of the most upmarket shooting lodges in the Dales and just look at you; you’re a mess. She hadn’t dressed for upmarket when she climbed into her jeans and flung on a red roll-neck jumper that morning. Even less so when she picked up her denim jacket on her way out. They’ll just have to take me as they find me, she told herself, opening the heavy front door and walking over to the reception area.

The ceiling in the hall was taller than her entire cottage, and if it wasn’t quite the Sistine Chapel it was certainly ornate, complete with gilded panels and a chandelier. The walls were all dark wood wainscoting, and here and there hung overlarge oil paintings of men with bulbous noses wearing their collars too tight, faces the color and texture of rare roast beef, like Jim Hatchley’s – the kind of paintings that Ray, her father, called “optical egotism.” They paid the rent, though. If a local artist got one of those self-styled bigwigs to commission such a portrait, it would probably keep him in paint and canvas for a few years. Even Ray knew the value of that.

“Can I help you, miss?”

An elegant silver-haired man in a black suit came forward to greet her. Annie’s first impression was that he looked like a funeral-parlor worker.

“Actually,” she said, feeling a bit snotty and more than a trifle intimidated by her surroundings, “it’s not Miss, it’s Detective Sergeant Cabbot.”

“Ah, yes, Sergeant, we’ve been expecting you. My name’s Lacey. George Lacey. General Manager. Please, come this way.”

He gestured toward a door with his name on it, and when they went inside Annie saw it was a modern office, complete with fax machine, computer, laser printer, the works. She would never have expected it from the old- fashioned decor, but the paying guests would be well-off businessmen, and they would demand all the modern conveniences of the electronic age as well as the primitive excitement of blood lust. And why not? They could afford it all.

Annie sat in a swivel chair and took out her notebook. “I don’t know if I can tell you any more than I told the other officer,” Lacey said, making a steeple of his hands on the desk. He had prissy sort of lips, Annie noticed, shaped in a cupid’s bow and far too red. They irritated her when he talked. She tried to keep her eyes on the knot of his regimental tie.

“I’m just here to confirm that it really was the man in the photograph who stayed here.” She laid her copy of Clough’s photo on the desk in front of him. “This man.”

Lacey nodded. “Mr. Clough. Yes. That was, indeed, him.”

“Has he been here before?”

“Mr. Clough is a frequent guest during the season.”

“Can you tell me the dates he was here?”

“Just a moment.” Lacey tapped a few keys on the computer and frowned at the screen. “He stayed here from Saturday, the fifth of December, until Thursday the tenth.”

“It’s a bit late in the year for a holiday in the Dales, isn’t it?”

“This is a shooting lodge, Sergeant. People do not come here for holidays. They come here to shoot grouse. This was the last weekend of the season and we were full to capacity.”

“What about now?”

“Not quite so busy. It comes and goes.”

“But you stay open all winter, even though the grouse season is over?”

“Oh, yes. We’re generally booked up over Christmas and New Year, of course. The rest of the time it’s… well, quieter, though we get a number of foreign guests. Our restaurant has an international reputation. One often has to make dinner reservations weeks in advance.”

“It must be an expensive operation to run.”