Cold Is The Grave

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” The valley of the shadow of death was a phrase that had always moved Banks, sent a shiver up his spine, though he would have been hard-pressed to explain what it meant to him. It was one phrase they hadn’t got rid of in the new translation, too. He thought of poor Graham Marshall all those years ago, walking through the valley of the shadow of death. They had never found his body, so he never had a funeral like Emily. There had been some sort of memorial service at school, Banks remembered, or a remembrance service, he wasn’t sure which. The headmaster had recited the Twenty-third Psalm. So much death. Sometimes his head seemed full of the voices of the dead.

Banks found himself wishing the funeral would soon be over. It wasn’t only the weather, the rain dripping down the back of his neck and the wet, cold wind that cut right through three layers of clothing to the bone, but the sight of the coffin perched at the graveside ready to be lowered, knowing that Emily was in there, the once-vital, mischievous spirit who had curled up and slept like a little child with her thumb in her mouth in a hotel room once, with him sitting in the chair listening to Dawn Upshaw’s song about sleep. Cold, cold is the grave, a line from an old folk ballad passed through his mind. The grave looked cold indeed, but the only one not feeling it now was Emily.

When it was over, the body lowered into its final resting place, people started drifting toward the car park. Ruth and Craig approached the Riddles. The chief constable seemed oblivious to them, and Craig hung back. Ruth said something to Rosalind, something that looked deeply earnest. Rosalind uttered a few words and touched her arm. Then Rosalind saw Banks alone and walked over to him with an elderly couple in tow.

“My mother and father,” she said, introducing them.

Banks shook their hands and offered his condolences.

“Are you coming to the house?” Rosalind asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t. Too much work.” He could probably have spared half an hour or so, but the truth was that he didn’t fancy making small talk with the Riddle family. “What did Ruth want?” he asked.

“Oh, so that’s who it is,” said Rosalind. “I wondered. She said she was a friend of Emily’s and wondered if she might have some sort of keepsake.”

“And?”

“I suggested she drop by the house and I’d see what I could do. Why?”

“No reason. The boy with her’s Craig Newton. Emily’s ex-boyfriend.”

“Is he a suspect?”

“Technically, yes. He pestered her after they split up, and he doesn’t have an alibi.”

“But realistically?”

Banks shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Rosalind glanced over at the two of them. “Then I suppose I should invite them both back to the house, shouldn’t I?”

“They’ve come a long way.”

“How did they know it was today?”

“I phoned Craig last night. The last time I interviewed him he said he’d like to be there, and I could see no reason why not. He must have contacted Ruth.”

Rosalind shook Banks’s hand and walked over with her mother and father toward Ruth’s car. Banks also saw Darren Hirst and the others who had been in the Bar None with Emily on the night of her death, Tina and Jackie. They all looked shell-shocked. Darren nodded and walked by. That reminded Banks of a glimmer of an idea he’d had, something he wanted to ask Darren. Not now, though; it would keep. Leave the poor lad to his grief for a while.

Back at the office, before Banks could even get his overcoat off and sit down, DS Hatchley knocked on his door and entered.

“How’s it going, Jim?” Banks asked.

“Fine. The funeral?”

“What you’d expect.”

Hatchley shut the door behind him and sat down opposite Banks. He was the opposite of Annie when it came to looking comfortable, always perched at the edge of the chair, squirming as if something sharp were digging into his arse. He took his cigarettes out and glanced at Banks for permission. Banks got up and opened the window, despite the cold, and both of them lit up.

“It’s about Castle Hill Books,” said Hatchley. “I sent young Lose-Some out there yesterday afternoon and she came back with an interesting haul.”

“Go on.”

“The owner’s a slimy little sod called Stan Fish. He’s been selling porn on the side for years. Anyway, it turns out he’s got a whole cupboardful of pirated computer software, games and music CDs. He says he got them from a chap he knows only as Greg. This Greg comes around every couple of weeks in a white van with a selection. So Lose-Some whips out her picture of Gregory Manners, and bob’s-your-uncle.”

“Good,” said Banks. “That’ll give us a bit of extra ammunition.” He looked at his watch. “Manners is on his way here as we speak.”

“Lose-Some also brought in a few samples of the goods,” Hatchley went on. “Vic Manson’s checking them for prints now. I’ll get him to put a rush on it. If he can match them with Manners’s…”

“It still doesn’t give us much, though,” said Banks. “Even if we can do Manners for pirating and distributing copyrighted software, it’s hardly a serious charge.”

“It might give you a handle on this other villain you’re after, though.”

“Barry Clough?”

“Aye.” Hatchley stubbed out his cigarette. “Yon Lose-Some has also been showing Manners’s picture around Daleview and a couple of people recognized him.”

“Nobody’s seen Clough, Andy Pandy or Jamie Gilbert around there, though?”

“Not yet, but we’re still asking.” Hatchley got up to leave. Before he could go, the door opened and Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe barged in brandishing one of the more notorious London tabloids. Gristhorpe sniffed the air, scowled at both of them, then said, “Seen the papers this morning, Alan?”

Banks looked at the newspaper. “Even if I’d had time,” he said, “it wouldn’t have been that one.”

A smile split Gristhorpe’s ruddy, pockmarked face. “Wouldn’t be my first choice either,” he said. “More the sort of thing you’d be reading, eh, Sergeant Hatchley?”

“If I’d time, sir,” muttered Hatchley, edging his way out of the office, winking at Banks as he shut the door behind him.

Gristhorpe dropped the tabloid on Banks’s desk. “You’d better have a gander, Alan,” he said. “It looks as if I’m going to be on damage control for the rest of the day.” Then he left as abruptly as he’d entered.

The color cover photo in itself was almost enough to give Banks a heart attack. There were two photos, actually, one of Barry Clough leaving a Soho restaurant, thrusting his palm toward the cameraman, and one of Jimmy Riddle leaving police headquarters. The way the photos were arranged together made it look as if the two men were meeting face-to-face. Centered below them was a photograph of Emily. It was a good one, professional, and it featured her “sophisticated” heroin-chic look. She had her blond hair piled up in an expensive mess and wore a strapless black evening gown. Not the same dress she’d been wearing the night of the hotel room, but a similar one. Banks had seen the picture before, or one very much like it, in Craig Newton’s house. Could Craig have sold it to the newspapers? Was he still that bitter over his split-up with Emily? More likely, Banks thought, that Barry Clough had got hold of some copies when Emily was living with him and that this was his response to Emily’s death and Riddle’s silence.

The headline screamed up at him: “CHIEF CONSTABLE’S DAUGHTER MURDER CASE: WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?” The story went on to tell of Emily’s association with “well-known club owner and man-about-town Barry Clough,” a man “the same age as her senior policeman father.” After a couple of not so subtle indications that “well-known club owner and man-about-town” was sort of shorthand for gangster, there were a couple of morally high-handed digressions of the “Do you know what your daughter’s doing and who she’s with tonight?” sort before the reporter got the real nitty-gritty: speculation about Clough’s expanding his “business empire” up north, and about his and Riddle’s being involved in some sort of crooked partnership. Emily’s role in all this was left to the readers to guess.