Ramsden’s, and set off for Helmthorpe for the second time that day. It was only three o’clock, and, as he wasn’t expected at Gristhorpe’s until five, he would have plenty of time to see how the locals were coping.
The Helmthorpe police station was a converted cottage on a narrow cobbled road that forked from the eastern end of the High Street towards the river. There, Weaver, who was running off more copies of the request for information, told him that three constables were still making door-to-door enquiries along Hill Road and another had been dispatched to the campsite.
That was the biggest headache, Banks realized. They would have to try and find out who had been staying at the campsite on Saturday night. Most of the campers would have moved on by now and it would be damn near impossible to get comprehensive or reliable information.
There was also the press to deal with. Besides Reg Summers of the local weekly, two other reporters were still hanging around outside the station, as Hatchley had warned, thrusting their notebooks at everyone who entered or left. Banks certainly liked to maintain good relations with the press, but at such an early stage in the investigation he could give them little of value. However, to gain and keep their goodwill – because he knew they would be useful eventually – he told them what he could in as pleasant a manner as possible.
At twenty to five, he left Weaver in charge and drove off to see Gristhorpe. On the way, he decided he would visit the Bridge that evening to see what he could get out of Steadman’s cronies. More, he hoped, than he’d managed to pick up so far.
3
ONE
Banks pulled into the rutted drive at five to five and walked towards the squat stone house. Gristhorpe lived in an isolated farmhouse on the north dale side above the village of Lyndgarth, about halfway between Eastvale and Helmthorpe. It was no longer a functioning farm, though the superintendent still held on to a couple of acres where he grew vegetables. Since his wife had died five years ago, he had stayed on there alone, and a woman from the village came up to do for him every morning.
The building was too austere for Banks, but he could see it was ideally suited to the environment. In a part of the country windswept and lashed by rain much of the year, any human dwelling had to be built like a fortress to provide even the most basic domestic comforts. Inside, though, Gristhorpe’s house was as warm and welcoming as the man himself.
Banks knocked at the heavy oak door, surprised at how the hollow sound echoed in the surrounding silence, but got no answer. On such a fine afternoon, he reasoned, he was more likely to find Gristhorpe in his garden, so he walked around the back.
He found the superintendent crouching by a heap of stones, apparently in the process of extending his wall. The older man got to his feet, red-faced, at the sound of footsteps and asked, ‘Is that the time already?’
‘It’s almost five,’ Banks answered. ‘I’m a few minutes early.’
‘Mmm… I seem to lose all track of time up here. Anyway, sit down.’ He gestured towards the rough grass by the stones. The superintendent was in his shirtsleeves, his ubiquitous Harris tweed jacket lying on the grass beside him. A gentle breeze ruffled his thick mop of silver hair. Below it, a red pockmarked face, upper lip all but obscured by a bristly grey moustache, grinned down at Banks. The oddest thing about Gristhorpe’s appearance – and it was a facet that disconcerted both colleagues and criminals alike – was his eyes. Deep set under bushy brows, they were those of a child: wide, blue, innocent. At odds with his six-foot-three wrestler’s build, they had been known to draw out confessions from even the hardest of villains and had made many an underling, caught out in a manufactured statement or an over-enthusiastic interrogation, blush and hide in shame. When all was well though, and the world seemed as fresh and clear as it did that day, Gristhorpe’s eyes shone with a gentle love of life and a sense of compassion that would have given the Buddha himself a good run for his money.
Banks sat for a while and helped Gristhorpe work on the drystone wall. It was a project that the superintendent had started the previous summer, and it had no particular purpose. Banks had made one or two attempts at adding pieces of stone but had at first got them the wrong way around so that the rain would have drained inwards and cracked the wall apart if a sudden frost came. Often, he had chosen pieces that simply would not fit. Lately, however, he had improved, and he found the occasional wall-building afternoons with Gristhorpe almost as relaxing and refreshing as playing with Brian’s train set. A silent understanding had developed between them about what stone would do and who would fix it in place.
After about fifteen minutes, Banks broke the silence: ‘I suppose you know that somebody dismantled one of these walls last night to cover a body?’
‘Aye,’ Gristhorpe said, ‘I’ve heard. Come on inside, Alan, and I’ll make a pot of tea. If I’m not mistaken there are still a few of Mrs Hawkins’s scones left, too.’ He rhymed ‘scones’ with ‘on’, not, like a southerner, with ‘own’.
They settled into the deep worn armchairs, and Banks cast his eyes over the bookcases that covered one entire wall from floor to ceiling. There were books on all kinds of subjects – local lore, geology, criminology, topography, history, botany, travel – and shelves of leather-bound classics ranging from Homer, Cervantes, Rabelais and Dante to Wordsworth, Dickens, James Joyce, W. B. Yeats and D. H. Lawrence. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice lay on the table; the position of the bookmark indicated that Gristhorpe had almost finished it. As always when he visited the superintendent, Banks mentally reminded himself that he should read more.
Gristhorpe’s office in Eastvale was much the same: books everywhere, and not all of them relevant to police work. He came from old dales farming stock, and his decision to join the police after university and army service had caused trouble. Nevertheless, he had persevered, and he had also helped out on the farm in his spare time. When Gristhorpe’s father saw that his son’s natural aptitude and capacity for hard work was getting him places, he stopped complaining and accepted the situation. Gristhorpe’s father had been sad to see the farm dwindle to little more than a large back garden before he died, but his pride in his son’s achievement and the status it gave him locally eased him, and his death was without acrimony.
Gristhorpe had told Banks all this during their frequent meetings, usually over a good single malt whisky after a wall-building session. The older man’s candour, along with more practical advice, made Banks feel like an apprentice, or protege. Their relationship had developed this way since the Gallows View affair, Banks’s dramatic introduction to northern police work. As he told what he knew about the Steadman murder, he was alert for any tips that might come his way.
‘It’s not going to be easy,’ Gristhorpe pronounced after a short silence. ‘And I won’t say it is. For one thing, you’ve all those tourists and campers to consider. If Steadman had an enemy from the past, it would be an ideal way of doing the job. They never keep records at campsites as far as I know. All they care about is collecting the money.’ He nibbled at his scone and sipped strong black tea. ‘Still, the killer could be a lot closer to home. Doesn’t look like you’ve got much physical evidence, though, does it? Somebody might have heard a car, but I doubt they’d have paid it much mind. I know that road. It swings north-east all the way over to Sattersdale. Still, I don’t suppose I need tell you your job, Alan. First thing is to find out as much as you can about Steadman. Friends, enemies, past, the lot. Nose about the village. Talk to people. Leave the donkey work to your men.’
‘I’m an outsider, though,’ Banks said. ‘I always will be as far as people around here are concerned. I look out of place and I sound out of place. Nobody’s going to give much away to me.’
‘Rubbish, Alan. Look at it this way. You’re a stranger in Helmthorpe, right?’ Banks nodded. ‘People notice you. They’ll soon get to know who you are. You don’t look like a tourist, and no villager will mistake you for one. You’re even a bit of a celebrity – at least for them as reads the papers around here. They’ll be curious, interested in the new copper, and they’ll want to find out what makes you tick. You’ll be surprised what they’ll tell you just to see how you react.’ He chuckled. ‘Before this is all over you’ll feel like a bloody priest in his confessional.’
Banks smiled. ‘I was brought up C. of E.’
‘Ah. We’re all Methodists or Baptists hereabouts,’ Gristhorpe said. ‘But some of us are more lapsed than others, and most of the daftest sects – your Sandemanians, for example – have all but disappeared.’
‘I hope I won’t have the same obligation to secrecy as a priest.’
‘Heavens, no!’ Gristhorpe exclaimed. ‘I want to know everything you find out. You’ve no idea what an
