Peter Robinson - In A Dry Season

Annie’s desk also took up a corner, part of which included a side window. It wasn’t much of a view, only the cobbled alley, a gate and the back wall of the Three Feathers, but at least she was close to a source of light and air, and it was good to be able to see something of the outside world. Even if there was hardly any breeze these days, she loved each gentle waft of warm air through the window; it lifted her spirits. These little things mattered so much, Annie had discovered. She had had her shot at the big time, the fast track, with all its excitement, but it had ended badly for her. Now she was slowly rediscovering what mattered in life.

Harkside was generally a law-abiding sort of community, so there wasn’t a lot for a detective sergeant to do. There was plenty of paperwork to keep her occupied, make her feel she’d earned her pay, but it was hardly a high overtime posting, and there were slack periods. That also suited her fine. Sometimes it was good to do nothing. And why should she complain if enough people weren’t getting robbed, killed or beaten up?

At the moment she had two domestic-violence cases and a spate of after-dark vandalism on her plate. And now the skeleton. Well, the others could wait. Inspector Harmond had increased patrols in the area most often hit by the vandals, who would probably be caught red-handed before long, and just now the wife-beaters were contrite and arranging to seek help.

Annie headed first to the coffee machine and filled her mug, the one with “She Who Must Be Obeyed” written on it, then she walked over and knocked on Inspector Harmond’s door. He asked her to come in.

“Sir?”

Harmond looked up from his desk. “Annie. What is it, lass?”

“Got a minute?”

“Aye. Sit down.”

Annie sat. Harmond’s was a plain office, with only his merit awards on the wall for decoration, and framed photos of his wife and children on the desk. In his early fifties, he seemed perfectly content to be a rural inspector for the rest of his working life. His head was too large for his gangly frame, and Annie always worried it might fall off if he tilted it too far to one side. It never had; not yet. He had a pleasant round, open face. The features were a bit coarse, and a few black hairs grew out of the end of his misshapen potato nose, but it was the kind of face you could trust. If eyes really were the windows of the soul, then Inspector Harmond had a decent soul.

“It’s this skeleton thing,” she said, crossing her legs and cradling her coffee mug on her lap.

“What about it?”

“Well, that’s just it, sir. We don’t know anything about it just yet. DCI Banks wanted to know how many doctors and dentists lived in Hobb’s End, and if anyone who used to live there lives here now.”

Harmond scratched his temple. “I can answer your last question easily enough,” he said. “You remember Mrs. Kettering, the one whose budgie escaped that time she was having a new three-piece suite delivered?”

“How could I forget?” It had been one of Annie’s first cases in Harkside.

Inspector Harmond smiled. “She lived in Hobb’s End. I don’t know exactly when or for how long, but I know she lived there. She must be pushing ninety if she’s a day.”

“Anyone else?”

“Not that I can think of. Not offhand, at any rate. Leave it with me, I’ll ask around. Remember where she lives?”

“Up on The Edge, isn’t it? The corner house with the big garden?”

The Edge was what the locals called the fifty-foot embankment that ran along the south side of Harksmere Reservoir, the road that used to lead over the packhorse bridge to Hobb’s End. Its real name was Harksmere View, and it didn’t lead anywhere now. Only one row of cottages overlooked the water, separated from the rest of Harkside village by about half a mile of open countryside.

“What about doctors and dentists?” Annie asked.

“That’s a bit trickier,” Harmond said. “There must have been a few over the years, but Lord knows what’s happened to them. Seeing as the village cleared out after the war, they’re probably all dead now. Remember, lass, I’m not that old. I was still a lad myself when the place emptied out. As far as I remember, there wasn’t any village bobby, either. Too small. Hobb’s End was part of the Harkside beat.”

“How many schools were there?”

Inspector Harmond scratched his head. “Just infants and junior, I think. Grammar school and secondary modern were here in Harkside.”

“Any idea where the old records would be?”

“Local education authority, most likely. Unless they were destroyed somehow. A lot of records got destroyed back then, after the war and all. Is there anything else?”

Annie sipped some coffee and stood up. “Not right now, sir.”

“You’ll keep me informed?”

“I will.”

“And, Annie?”

“Yes, sir?”

Harmond scratched the side of his nose. “This DCI Banks. I’ve never met him myself, but I’ve heard a bit about him. What’s he like?”

Annie paused at the door and frowned as she thought. “Do you know, sir,” she said finally, “I haven’t got a clue.”

“Bit of an enigma, then, eh?”

“Yes,” Annie said, “a bit of an enigma. I suppose you could say that.”

“Better watch yourself, then, lass,” she heard him say as she turned to leave.

Before I tell you what happened next, let me tell you a little about myself and my village. My name, as you already know, is Gwen Shackleton, which is short for Gwynneth, not for Gwendolyn. I know this sounds Welsh, but my family has lived in Hobb’s End, Yorkshire, for at least two generations. My father, God bless his soul, died of cancer three years before the war began, and by 1940 my mother was an invalid, suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Sometimes she was able to help out in the shop, but not often, so the brunt of the work fell to me.

Matthew helped me as much as he could, but university kept him busy most of the week and the Home Guard took up his weekends. He was twenty-one, but despite the call-up, the Ministry was encouraging him to finish the third year of his engineering degree at the University of Leeds. They believed, I suppose, that his training would come in useful in the forces.

Our little shop was a newsagent’s-cum-general store about halfway along the High Street, near the butcher’s and the greengrocer’s, and we lived above it. We didn’t sell perishable goods, just things like newspapers, sweets, cigarettes, stationery, jam and other odds and ends, tea and tinned goods – depending, of course, on what was available at the time. I was especially proud of the little lending library I had built up. Because paper was getting scarce and books were in short supply, I rented them out for tuppence a week. I kept a good selection of World’s Classic editions: Anthony Trollope, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens in particular. I also stocked a number of the more sensational novels, Agatha Christie and the Mills and Boon romances, for those who liked such things – unfortunately, the majority of my customers!

Though most of the able-bodied men in the village had joined up and put on one uniform or another, the place had never seemed busier. The old flax mill was operating at full strength again and most of the married women worked there. Before the war, it had practically come to a standstill, but now the military wanted flax to make webbing for parachute harnesses and other things where a tough fiber was needed, like gun tarpaulins and fire hoses.

There was also a big RAF base about a mile or so away through Rowan Woods, and the High Street was often busy with Jeeps and lorries honking their horns and trying to pass one another in the narrow space. The airmen sometimes came to the village pubs – the Shoulder of Mutton just down the High Street, and the Duke of Wellington over the river – except when they went to Harkside, where there was much more to do. We didn’t even have one cinema in Hobb’s End, for example, but there were three in Harkside.