Peter Robinson - In A Dry Season

“I need to know a lot more about the village,” he said to DS Cabbot. “Some names would be a great help. Try the Voters Register and the Land Registry.” He pointed toward the ruins of the cottage near the bridge. “The outbuilding clearly belonged to that cottage, so I’d like to know who lived there and who the neighbors were. It seems to me that we’ve got three possibilities. Either we’re dealing with someone who used the empty village as a dumping spot to bury a body during the time it was in disuse-”

“Between May 1946 and August 1953. I checked this morning.”

“Right. Either then, or the body was buried while the village was still occupied, before May 1946, and the victim wasn’t buried too far from home. Or it was put there this summer, as you suggested earlier. It’s too early for speculation, but we do need to know who lived in that cottage before the village emptied out, and if anyone from the village was reported missing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What happened to the church? I’m assuming there was one.”

“A church and a chapel. Saint Bartholomew’s was deconsecrated, then demolished.”

“Where are the parish records now?”

“I don’t know. Never had cause to seek them out. I imagine they were moved to Saint Jude’s in Harkside, along with all the coffins from the graveyard.”

“They might be worth a look if you draw a blank elsewhere. You never know what you can find out from old church records and parish magazines. There’s the local newspaper, too. What’s it called?”

“The Harkside Chronicle .”

“Right. Might be worth looking there too if our expert can narrow the range a bit this evening. And, DS Cabbot?”

“Sir?”

“Look, I can’t keep calling you DS Cabbot. What’s your first name?”

She smiled. “Annie, sir. Annie Cabbot.”

“Right, Annie Cabbot, do you happen to know how many doctors or dentists there were in Hobb’s End?”

“I shouldn’t imagine there were many. Most people probably went to Harkside. Maybe there were a few more around when everyone was working in the flax mill. Very altruistic, very concerned about their workers’ welfare, some of these old mill owners.”

“Very concerned they were fit to work a sixteen-hour shift without dropping dead, more like,” said Banks.

Annie laughed. “Bolshevik.”

“I’ve been called worse. Try to find out, anyway. It’s a long shot, but if we can find any dental records matching the remains, we’ll be in luck.”

“I’ll look into it, sir. Anything else?”

“Utilities, tax records. They might all have to be checked.”

“And what should I do next year?”

Banks smiled. “I’m sure you can conscript one of your PCs to help. If we don’t get a break soon, I’ll see what I can do about manpower, though somehow I doubt this is a high-priority case.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“For now, let’s concentrate on the identity of the victim. That’s crucial.”

“Okay.”

“Just a thought, but do you happen to know if there’s anyone who lived in Hobb’s End still alive, maybe living in Harkside now? It doesn’t seem an unreasonable assumption.”

“I’ll ask Inspector Harmond. He grew up around these parts.”

“Good. I’ll leave you to it and see these bones off to Leeds with John.”

“Do you want me to go down there this evening?”

“If you like. Meet me at the lab at six o’clock. Where is it?”

Annie told him.

“In the meantime,” he said, “here’s my mobile number. Give me a ring if you come up with anything.”

“Right you are, sir.” Annie just seemed to touch her sunglasses and they slid down perfectly into place on her nose. With that, she turned and strode off into the woods.

Banks was an odd fish, Annie thought as she drove back to Harkside. Of course, before she’d met him she’d heard a few rumors. She knew, for example, that Chief Constable Riddle hated him, that Banks was under a cloud, almost lost in the clouds, though she didn’t know why. Someone had even hinted at fisticuffs between the two. Whatever the reason, his career was on hold and he was not a good horse to hitch one’s wagon to.

Annie had no particular liking for Jimmy Riddle, either. On the one or two occasions she had met him, she had found him arrogant and condescending. Annie was one of Millie’s projects – ACC Millicent Cummings, new Director of Human Resources, dedicated to bringing more women into the ranks and seeing that they were well-treated – and the antagonism between Millie and Riddle, who had opposed her appointment from the start, was well-known. Not that Riddle was especially for the ill-treatment of women, but he preferred to avoid the problem altogether by keeping their presence among the ranks to an absolute minimum.

Annie had also heard that Banks’s wife had left him for someone else not too long ago. Not only that, but there were stories going around that he had a woman in Leeds, had had for some time, even before his wife left. She had heard him described as a loner, a skiver and a Bolshie bastard. He was a brilliant detective gone to seed, they said, over the hill since his wife left, past it, burned out, a shadow of his former self.

On first impressions, Annie didn’t really know what to make of him. She thought she liked him. She certainly found him attractive, and he didn’t look much older than his mid-thirties, despite the scattering of gray at the temples of his closely cropped black hair. As far as being burned out was concerned, he seemed tired and he seemed to carry a burden of sadness in him, but she could sense that the fire still smoldered somewhere behind his sharp blue eyes. A little diminished in power, perhaps, but still there.

On the other hand, perhaps he really had lost it, and he was simply going through the motions, content to shuffle papers until retirement. Perhaps the fire she sensed in him was simply embers, not fully extinguished yet, just about to cave in on themselves. Well, if Annie had learned one thing over the past couple of years, it was not to jump to conclusions about anyone: the brave man often appears weak; the wise man often seems foolish. After all, enough people thought she was weird, too, and it wouldn’t be hard to argue that she had been merely going through the motions lately, either. She wondered if there were any rumors about her going around the region. If there were, she had a good guess what they would be: dyke bitch.

Annie parked on the strip of Tarmac beside the ugly brick section station and walked inside. Only four of them worked directly out of the station: Inspector Harmond, Annie and PCs Cameron and Gould. Apart from Samantha, their civilian clerk, Annie was the only woman. That was okay with her; they seemed a pretty decent bunch of men, as men go. She certainly felt no threat from any of them. PC Cameron was married with two kids, to whom he was clearly devoted. Gould seemed to be one of those rare types who have no sexual dimension whatsoever, content to live at home with his mum, play with his model trains and add stamps to his album. She knew that in books such types often turn out to be the most dangerous of all, the serial killers and sexual deviants, but Gould was harmless. Even if he liked to wear women’s underwear in private, Annie didn’t care. Inspector Harmond was, well, avuncular . He liked to think of himself as a bit like Sergeant Blaketon out of Heartbeat , but he didn’t even come close, in Annie’s opinion.

Harkside police station might be ugly on the outside but at least inside it was a sparsely populated open-plan office area – apart from Inspector Harmond’s office, partitioned off at the far end – and there was plenty of room to spread oneself around. Annie liked that. Her L-shaped desk was the messiest of all, but she knew where everything was and could put her hands on anything anyone asked her for so quickly that even Inspector Harmond had given up teasing her about it.