Peter Robinson: Strange Affair

“Could it have been a heart attack, or something like that?”

“It could have been. Heart attacks aren’t so common in healthy young women, but if she had some sort of genetic disorder or preexisting condition… Let’s say it’s within the realm of the possible, but unlikely.”

Dr. Burns turned back to the body and probed gently here and there. He tried to unloosen the woman’s hand from the steering wheel but couldn’t. “That’s interesting,” he said. “Rigor hasn’t progressed as far as the hands yet, so it looks as if we’re dealing with cadaveric spasm.”

“What does it mean in this case?”

Dr. Burns stood up and faced Annie. “It means she was holding the wheel when she died. And the gear stick.”

Annie thought about the implications of that. Either the woman had just managed to pull into the lay-by when she died, or she was trying to drive away from something, or someone.

Annie stuck her head through the car window, uncomfortably aware of the closeness of the corpse, and looked down. One foot on the clutch, the other on the accelerator, gear stick in reverse and ignition turned on. She reached out and touched the travel mug. It felt cool.

As she moved back, Annie smelled just a hint of something vaguely sweet and metallic. She told Dr. Burns. He frowned and leaned forward, apologizing that he had no sense of smell. Gently, he touched the woman’s hair and pulled it back to expose her ear. Then he gasped.

“Good Lord,” he said. “Look at this.”

Annie bent over and looked. Just behind the woman’s right ear was a tiny star-shaped hole, around which the skin was burned and blackened with a sootlike residue. There wasn’t much blood, and what there was had been hidden by her long red hair. Annie was no expert, but it didn’t take an expert to realize that this was a gunshot wound fired from close quarters. And if there was no gun in sight, and the woman had one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gear stick, then it could hardly have been a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Dr. Burns leaned through the window in front of the woman, feeling the other side of her skull for signs of blood and an exit wound. “Nothing,” he said. “No wonder we couldn’t see anything. The bullet must be still inside her skull.” He stepped away from the car, as if washing his hands of the whole affair. “Okay,” he said, “that’s all I can do for now. The rest is up to Dr. Glendenning.”

Annie looked at him and sighed, then she called Hatchley over. “Inform Superintendent Gristhorpe that we’ve got what looks very much like a murder on our hands. And we’d better get Dr. Glendenning and the SOCOs down here as soon as possible.”

Hatchley’s face dropped. Annie knew why, and she sympathized. It was the weekend, but all leave would be canceled. Sergeant Hatchley probably had plans to go and watch the local cricket team and have a booze-up with the lads afterward. But not now. She wouldn’t even be surprised if Banks was called back, depending on the scale of the investigation.

She looked down the road and her heart sank as she saw the first media vans arriving. How quickly bad news travels, she thought.

Unaware of the excitement just a few miles down the road, Banks was up and around before eight o’clock that morning, coffee and newspaper on the table in front of him, mild hangover held at bay by aspirin. He hadn’t slept at all well, mostly because he had been waiting for the phone to ring. And he hadn’t been able to get that song Penny Cartwright had been singing out of his mind: “Strange Affair.” The melody haunted him and the lyrics, with their images of death and fear, troubled him.

His window framed a view of blue sky above the rising northern daleside and the gray flagstone roofs of Helmthorpe, about half a mile away at the valley bottom, dominated by its church tower with the odd turret on one corner. It was similar to his view from the wall by his old cottage, just a slightly different angle. But it failed to move him. He could see that it was beautiful, but he couldn’t feel it. There seemed to be something missing, some connection, or perhaps there was a sort of invisible shield or thick fog between him and the rest of the world and it dimmed the power of all he had held dear to move him in any way.

Music, landscape, words on a page – all seemed inert and impotent, distant and unimportant.

Since the fire had consumed his home and possessions four months ago, Banks had become withdrawn and taciturn; he knew it, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was suffering from depression, but knowing that was one thing, changing it quite another.

It had started the day he left the hospital and went to look at the ruins of his cottage. He hadn’t been prepared for the scale of the damage: roof gone, windows burned out; inside a shambles of charred debris, nothing salvageable, hardly anything even recognizable. And it didn’t help that the man who had done this had got away.

After a few days convalescing at Gristhorpe’s Lyndgarth farmhouse, Banks had found the flat and moved in. Some mornings he didn’t want to get out of bed. Most nights he spent watching television, any old rubbish, and drinking. He wasn’t drinking too much, but he was drinking steadily, mostly wine, and smoking again.

His withdrawal had driven the wedge even deeper between him and Annie Cabbot, who desperately seemed to need something from him. He thought he knew what it was, but he couldn’t give it to her. Not yet. It had also cooled his relationship with Michelle Hart, a detective inspector who had recently transferred to Sex Crimes and Child Protection in Bristol, much too far away to maintain a reasonable long-distance relationship. Michelle had her own problems, too, Banks realized. Whatever it was that haunted her was always there, always in the way, even when they were laughing or making love. They’d been good for each other for a while, no doubt about it, but now they were down to the “just good friends” stage that usually comes before the end.

It seemed as if the fire and subsequent spell in the hospital had put his life on pause, and he couldn’t find the “play” button. Even work, when he got back to it, had been boring, consisting mostly of paperwork and interminable meetings that never settled anything. Only an occasional pint with Gristhorpe or Jim Hatchley, a chat about football or the previous evening’s television, had relieved the tedium. His daughter, Tracy, had visited as often as she could, but she had been studying hard for her finals.

Brian had dropped by a few times, too, and now he was in a recording studio in Dublin with his band working on a new CD. Their first as the Blue Lamps had done okay, but the second was slated for much bigger and better things.

More than once Banks had thought of counseling, only to reject the idea. He had even considered that Dr. Jenny Fuller, a consultant psychologist he had worked with on a number of cases, might be able to help, but she was on one of her extended teaching gigs – Australia this time – and when he thought more about it, the idea of Jenny delving into the murky depths of his subconscious didn’t hold a lot of appeal. Maybe whatever was there was best left there.

When it came down to it, he didn’t need any interfering shrink poking around in his mind and telling him what was wrong. He knew what was wrong, knew he spent too much time sitting around the flat and brooding. He also knew that the healing process – the mental and emotional process, not merely the physical – would take time, and that it was something he had to do alone, make his way step by weary step back to the land of the living. No doubt about it, the fire had burned much deeper than his skin.