had made with the band, and its modal structure had stood up well to the addition of electric guitars and percussion. But this time it sounded fresh. Though the song had nothing to do with the bad news she had heard that afternoon, murder was murder, whether it had been committed the previous night or two hundred years ago. Perhaps she would write a song herself. Others would sing it or listen to it in warm secure rooms hundreds of years in the future.
The whisky and hash were doing their work; Penny was drifting. Suddenly, the memory of that summer so many years ago sprang clear as yesterday into her mind. There had been many good years, of course, many good times before the craziness of fame spoiled it all, but that summer ten years ago stood out more than the rest. As she relived it, she could smell the green warmth of the grass and catch the earth and animal scents on the feather-light breeze.
Then the general memory crystallized into one particular day. It was hot, so hot that Emma had refused to move out of the shade for fear of burning her sensitive skin. And Michael, who was sulking for some reason, had stayed at home reading Chatterton’s poems. So it was just Penny and Harry. They had walked all the way over to Wensleydale, Harry, tall and strong, leading the way, and Penny keeping up the best she could. That day, they had sat high on the valley side above Bainbridge, below Semerwater, where they ate salmon sandwiches and drank chilled orange juice from a flask as they basked in the heat and looked down on the tiny village with its neat central green and Roman fort. They could see the whitewashed front of the fifteenth-century Rose and Crown, and the River Bain danced and sparkled as it tripped down the falls to join the gleaming band of the Ure.
Then the scene dissolved, broke apart and shifted back in time. So vividly had Harry recreated the past in her mind that she felt she had been there. The valley bottom was marshy and filled with impenetrable thickets. Nobody ventured there. The hillmen built circular huts in clearings they made high on the valley sides near the outcrops of limestone and grits, and it was there that they went about the business of hunting, raising oats, and breeding a few sheep and cattle. A Roman patrol marched along the road just below where they sat, strangers in a cold alien landscape but sure of themselves, their helmets shining, heavy cloaks pinned at the chest with enamelled brooches.
The two scenes overlapped: ten years ago and seventeen hundred years ago. It had all been the same to Harry. She could sense the stubborn pride of the Brigantes and the confidence of the Roman conquerors. She could even, in a way, understand why Queen Cartimandua had sided with the invaders, who brought new, civilized ways to that barbaric outpost. The tension spread throughout the dales as Venutius, the Queen’s ex-husband, and his rebellious followers prepared for their last stand at Stanwick, north of Richmond. Which they lost.
Harry brought it all alive for her, and if there had been, sometimes, an inexplicable awkwardness and uneasiness between them, it had always disappeared when the past became more alive than the present. How bloody innocent I was then, Penny thought, laughing at herself, and all of sixteen, too. How long it took me to grow up, and what a road it was.
Then she remembered the coins they had gone to see in the York museum – VOLISIOS, DUMNOVEROS and CARTIMANDUA, they were marked – and the pigs of lead stamped IMP, CAES: DOMITIANO: AVG. COS: VII, and, on the other side, BRIG. The Latin words had seemed like magical incantations back then.
And so she drifted. The joint was long finished, the tape had ended, the level in the whisky bottle had gone down and the memories came thick and fast. Then, as suddenly as they had started, they ceased. All Penny was left with was blankness inside; there were vague feelings but no words, no images. She worked at the bottle, lit new cigarettes from the stubs of old ones, and at some point during the evening the tears that at first just trickled down her cheeks turned into deep, heart-racking sobs.
4
ONE
Monday morning dawned on Helmthorpe as clear and warm as the five previous days. While this wasn’t exactly unprecedented, it would have been enough to dominate most conversations had there not been a more sensational subject closer at hand.
In the post office, old bent Mrs Heseltine, there to send her monthly letter to her son in Canada (‘Doin’ right well for ’imself.. .’E’s a full perfesser now!’), was holding forth.
‘Strangled by a madman,’ she repeated in a whisper. ‘And right ’ere in our village. I don’t know what the world’s coming to, I don’t. We’re none of us safe anymore, and that’s a fact. Best keep yer doors locked and not go out after dark.’
‘Rubbish!’ Mrs Anstey said. ‘It was ’is wife as done it. Fer t’ money, like. Stands to reason. Money’s t’ root of all evil, you mark my words. That’s what my Albert used ter say.’
‘Aye,’ muttered Miss Sampson under her breath. ‘That’s because ’e never made any, the lazy sod.’
Mrs Dent, having read every lurid novel in Helmthorpe library and some especially imported from Eastvale and York, was more imaginative than the rest. She put forward the theory that it was the beginning of another series of moors murders.
‘It’s Brady and Hindley all over again,’ she said. ‘They’ll be digging ’em up all over t’ place. There was that Billy Maxton, disappeared wi’out a trace, and that there Mary Richards. You’ll see. Digging ’em up all over t’ place, they’ll be.’
‘I thought they’d run off to Swansea together, Billy Maxton and Mary Richards,’ chipped in Letitia Stanford, the spindly postmistress. ‘Anyway, they’ll be questioning us all, no doubt about that. That little man from Eastvale, it’ll be. I saw ’im poking about ’ere all day yesterday.’
‘Aye,’ added Mrs Heseltine. ‘I saw ’im, too. Looked too short for a copper.’
‘’E’s a southerner,’ said Mrs Anstey, as if that settled the matter of height once and for all.
At that moment, the bell jangled as Jack Barker walked in to send off a short story to one of the few magazines that helped him eke out a living. He beamed at the assembled ladies, who all stared back at him like frightened prunes, bid them good morning, conducted his business, then left.
‘Well,’ sighed Miss Sampson indignantly. ‘And ’im a friend of Mr Steadman’s too. I’d like to see what the poor man’s enemies is doing.’
‘He’s an odd one, all right,’ Letitia Stanford agreed. ‘Not the killing type, though.’
‘And how would you know?’ asked Mrs Dent sharply. ‘You should read some of ’is books. Fair make you blush, they would. And full of murder, too.’ She shook her head and clucked her tongue slowly at the sprightly figure disappearing down the street.
TWO
Sally Lumb sat in her best underwear before the dressing table mirror. Her long honey-blonde hair was parted in the middle and brushed neatly over her white shoulders. A short, carefully maintained fringe covered just enough of her high forehead. As she studied her milky skin, she decided it was about time she did some sunbathing. Not too much, because she was so fair and it made her red and sore, but just an hour or so each day to give her skin a deep golden hue.
She had a good face, and she knew all her weak points. Her eyes were fine – big, blue and beguiling – and her nose was perfectly in proportion, with just a hint of a bob at its tip. If anything was wrong, it was her cheeks; they were a little too plump and her cheekbones weren’t well enough defined. It was only puppy fat, though. Like that around her hips and thighs, it would disappear completely in time. Nevertheless, there were ways to play down its effect right now, so why wait? The same with her mouth. It was too full – voluptuous would be the kindest word – and that wasn’t likely to change by itself.
Sally studied the array of tubes, palettes, brushes, sticks and bottles in front of her, then made her skilful choice of the correct shades and tints calculated to highlight the best and obscure the worst of her facial features. After all, Chief Inspector Banks was from London, so she’d heard, and he would naturally expect a woman always
