Peter Robinson: Blood At The Root

Then there were those endless hours in the rain, wind and snow, knocking at door after door, your feet aching, the damp and chill fast seeping right into the marrow of your bones, wishing you’d chosen some other career, thinking even marriage and kids would be better than this.

And, needless to say, every now and then some clever-arse pillock would tell her she was too pretty to be a police man , or would suggest she could put her handcuffs on him anytime she wanted, ha-ha-ha. But that was all part of the game, and she didn’t mind as much as she sometimes pretended she did to annoy Sergeant Hatchley. As far as Susan was concerned, the human race would always contain a large number of clever-arse pillocks, no matter what you thought. And the greatest percentage of them, in her experience, were likely to be men.

But on a fine morning like this, the valley sides beyond the town’s western edge crisscrossed with limestone walls, slopes still lush green after the late-summer rains, and the purple heather coming into bloom up high, where the wild moorland began, it was as good a way as any to be earning your daily crust. And there was nothing like a house-to-house for getting to know your patch.

The morning chill had quickly given way to warmth, and Susan guessed Eastvale might hit seventy before the day was over. Indian summer, indeed. She took her jacket off and slung it over her shoulder. At that time of year in the Dales, any good day was a bonus not to be wasted. Tomorrow might come rain, flood and famine, so seize the moment. Children played football in the streets, or rode around on bicycles and skateboards; men with their shirtsleeves rolled up flung buckets of soapy water over their cars, then waxed them to perfection; groups of teenagers stood around street corners smoking, trying to look sullen and menacing, and failing on both counts; doors and windows stood open; some people even sat on their doorsteps reading the Sunday papers and drinking tea.

As Susan walked, she could smell meat roasting and cakes baking. She also heard snatches of just about every kind of music, from Crispian St. Peters singing “You Were on My Mind” to the opening of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which she only recognized because it was the same excerpt as the one on the CD she got free with her classical-music magazine last month.

The Leaview Estate had been built just after the war. The houses, a mix of bungalows, semis and terraces, were solid, their style and materials in harmony with the rest of Swains-dale’s limestone and gritstone architecture. No ugly maisonettes or blocks of flats spoiled the skyline the way they did across town on the newer East Side Estate. And on the Lea-view Estate, many of the streets were named after flowers.

It was almost noon, and Susan had already covered the Primroses, the Laburnums and the Roses without any luck. Now she was about to move on to the Daffodils and Buttercups. She carried a clipboard with her, carefully ticking off all the houses she visited, putting question marks and notes beside any responses she found suspicious, keeping a keen eye open for bruised knuckles and any other signs of recent pugilism. If someone wasn’t home, she would circle the house number. After every street, she used her personal radio to report back to the station. If Hatchley or any of the uniformed officers got results first, then the communications center would inform her.

A boy came speeding around the corner of Daffodil Rise on Rollerblades, and Susan managed to jump out of the way in the nick of time. He didn’t stop. She held her hand to her chest until her heartbeat slowed to normal and thought about arresting him on a traffic offense. Then the adrenaline ebbed away and she got her breath back. She rang the bell of number two.

The woman who answered was probably in her late fifties, Susan guessed. Nicely turned out: hair recently permed, only a touch of lipstick, face powder. Maybe just back from church. She wore a beige cardigan, despite the heat. As she spoke, she held it closed over her pale pink blouse.

“Yes, dearie?” she said.

Susan showed her warrant card and held out the mortuary attendant’s sketch. “We’re trying to find out who this boy is,” she said. “We think he might live locally, so we’re asking around to find out if anyone knows him.”

The woman stared at the drawing, then tilted her head and scratched her chin.

“Well,” she said. “It could be Jason Fox.”

“Jason Fox?” It sounded like a pop star’s name to Susan.

“Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Fox’s young lad.”

Well, Susan thought, tapping her pen against her clipboard, that’s enlightening. “Do they live around here?”

“Aye. Just over the street.” She pointed. “Number seven. But I only said it might be. It’s not a good likeness, you know, love. You ought to get a proper artist working for you. Like my lad, Laurence. Now there’s an artist for you. He sells his prints at the craft center in town, you know. I’m sure he-”

“Yes, Mrs…?”

“Ingram’s the name. Laurence Ingram.”

“I’ll bear him in mind, Mrs. Ingram. Now, is there anything you can tell me about Jason Fox?”

“The nose isn’t right. That’s the main thing. Very good with noses, is my Laurence. Did Curly Watts from ‘ Coronation Street ’ down to a tee, and that’s not an easy one. Did you know he’d done Curly Watts? Right popular with the celebrities is my Laurence. Oh, yes, very-”

Susan took a deep breath, then went on. “Mrs. Ingram, could you tell me if you’ve seen Jason Fox around lately?”

“Not since yesterday. But then he’s never around much. Lives in Leeds, I think.”

“How old is he?”

“I couldn’t say for certain. He’s left school, though. I know that.”

“Any trouble?”

“Jason? No. Quiet as a mouse. As I said, you hardly ever see him around. But it does look like him except for the nose. And it’s easy to get noses wrong, as my Laurence says.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Ingram,” said Susan, glancing over at number seven. “Thank you very much.” And she hurried down the path.

“Wait a minute,” Mrs. Ingram called after her. “Aren’t you going to tell me what’s happened? After all the help I’ve given you. Has summat happened to young Jason? Has he been up to summat?”

If Jason’s the one we’re looking for, Susan thought, then you’ll find out soon enough. As yet, he was only a “possible,” but she knew she had better inform Banks before barging in on her own. She went back to the corner of the street and spoke into her personal radio.

Banks walked quickly through the narrow streets of tourist shops behind the police station, then down King Street toward Daffodil Rise. Beyond the Leaview Estate, the town gradually dissolved into countryside, the sides of the valley narrowing and growing steeper the farther west they went.

Near Eastvale, Swainsdale was a broad valley, with plenty of room for villages and meadows, and for the River Swain to meander this way and that. But twenty or thirty miles in, around Swainshead, it was an area of high fells, much narrower and less hospitable to human settlements. One or two places, like Swainshead itself, and the remote Skield, managed to eke out an existence in the wild landscape around Witch Fell and Adam’s Fell, but only just.

The last row of old cottages, Gallows View, pointed west like a crooked finger into the dale. Banks’s first case in Eastvale had centered around those cottages, he remembered as he hurried on toward Daffodil Rise.

Graham Sharp, who had been an important figure in the case, had died of a heart attack over the summer, Banks had heard. He had sold his shop a few years ago, and it had been run since by the Mahmoods, whom Banks knew slightly through his son, Brian. He had seen them down at the station, too, recently; according to Susan, someone had lobbed a brick through their window a couple of weeks ago.