Peter Robinson - The Hanging Valley

There weren’t many caps and gowns in evidence on High Street in Oxford the following morning. Most of the people seemed to be ambling along in that lost but purposeful way tourists have. Banks and Hatchley were looking for somewhere to eat a quick breakfast before getting down to work at the station.

Hatchley pointed across the street. ‘There’s a McDonald’s. They do quite nice breakfasts. Maybe…’ He looked at Banks apprehensively, as if worried that the chief inspector might turn out to be a gourmet as well as a southerner and a lover of 1960s music. Despite all the times they’d enjoyed toasted teacakes and steak pies together, maybe Banks would insist on frogs’ legs with anchovy sauce for breakfast.

Banks glanced at his watch and scowled. ‘At least they’re fast. Come on then. Egg McMuffin it is.’

Astonished, Hatchley followed him through the golden arches. Most of the places Banks had eaten in on his trip to Toronto had provided quick friendly service — so much so that it had been one of the things that had impressed him — but it seemed that even McDonald’s could do nothing to alter the innate sloth and surliness of the English catering industry. The look they got from the uniformed girl behind the counter immediately communicated that they were being a bloody nuisance in placing an order, and, of course, they had to wait. Even when she slung the food at them, she didn’t say, ‘Thank you, please come again.’

Finally, they sat by the window and watched people walk in and out of W. H. Smith’s for the morning papers. Hatchley ate heartily, but Banks picked at his food, then abandoned it and settled for black coffee and a cigarette.

‘Nice bloke, that Ted Folley,’ Hatchley said with his mouth half full of sausage. ‘Not what I expected.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘Oh, some toffee-nosed git, I suppose. He’s real down-to-earth, though. Dresses like a toff, mind you. They’d have a bit of a giggle over him in the Oak.’

‘Probably in the Queen’s Arms, too,’ Banks added.

‘Aye.’

They had found time for a few drinks with Folley before returning to their hotel for a good night’s sleep, and Banks wondered whether it was Ted’s generosity that had won Hatchley over, or his store of anecdotes. Either way, the sergeant had managed to down a copious amount of local ale (which he pronounced to be of ‘passable’ quality) in a very short time.

They had stood at the bar of a noisy Broad Street pub, and Ted — a dapper man with Brylcreemed hair and a penchant for three-piece pinstripe suits and garish bow ties — had regaled them with stories of Oxford’s privileged student classes. Hatchley had been particularly amused by the description of a recent raid on an end-of-term party: ‘And there she was,’ Folley had said, ‘deb of the year with her knickers round her ankles and white powder all over her stiff upper lip.’ The sergeant had laughed so much he had got hiccups, which kept returning to haunt him for the rest of the evening.

‘Come on,’ Banks said. ‘Hurry up. It can’t be so bloody delicious you need to savour every mouthful.’

Reluctantly, Hatchley ate up his food and slurped his coffee. Ten minutes later they were in Ted Folley’s office in St Aldates.

‘I’ve got the files out already,’ Ted said. ‘If you can’t find what you’re after there, come and see me. I think you will, though. They cover all unsolved crimes, including hit-and-runs, involving women during the three-year period you mentioned.’

‘Thank God there aren’t many,’ Banks said, picking up the slim pile.

‘No,’ Folley said. ‘We’re lucky. The students keep us busy enough but we don’t get all that many mysterious deaths. They’re usually drug-related.’

‘These?’

‘Some of them. Use that office over there.’ Folley pointed across to a small glass-partitioned area. ‘Doug’s on holiday, so you won’t be disturbed.’

Most of the cases were easily dealt with. Banks or Hatchley would phone friends or parents of the deceased, whenever phone numbers appeared in the files, and simply ask if the name Stephen Collier meant anything. On the off chance, they also asked if anyone had hired a private investigator named Raymond Addison to look into the unsolved crime. In the cases where no numbers were given or where people had moved, they made notes to follow up on later. In some of those cases, the phone directory told them what they needed to know, and Ted also proved as helpful as ever.

By mid-afternoon, after a short lunch break, they had only three possibilities left. Folley was able to rule one of those out — the girl’s parents had died tragically in a plane crash less than a year after their daughter’s death — which left one each for Banks and Hatchley. They tossed for it, and Banks drew the phoneless family in Jericho, Hatchley the paraplegic father in Woodstock.

Wedged between Walton Street and the canal, Jericho is a maze of small nineteenth-century terraced houses, originally built for the foundry workers and navvies of the city. Most of the streets are named after Victorian battles or military heroes. It is as far away in spirit and appearance from the magnificent architectural beauty of the old university city as is Eastvale’s East End Estate from its cobbled market square and Norman church.

Banks drove slowly down Great Clarendon Street until he found the turning he wanted. His car attracted the attention of two scruffy children playing jacks on the pavement, and he was manoeuvred into paying them fifty pence to ‘protect’ it for him.

At first no one answered the cracked blue door, but eventually Banks heard someone move inside and when the door opened an old haggard face stared out. He couldn’t tell whether it was male or female until a deep man’s voice asked him roughly what he wanted.

‘It’s about your daughter, Cheryl,’ he said. ‘May I come in?’

The man blinked and opened the door a bit wider. Banks could smell boiled turnip and stale pipe smoke.

‘Our Cheryl’s been dead six years or more,’ the man said. ‘Nobody did anything then; why should they bother now?’

‘If I could just come in…?’

The man said nothing, but he opened the door wider to admit Banks. There was no hall; the door opened directly into a small living room. The curtains were half closed, cutting out most of the light, and the air felt hot and cloying. From what Banks could see, the place wasn’t dirty but it wasn’t exactly clean either. A grey-haired old woman with a blanket over her knees sat in a wheelchair by the empty grate. She looked round as he came in and gave him a blank smile.

‘It’s about our Cheryl,’ the man said, reaching for his pipe.

‘I heard.’

‘Look, Mrs Duggan,’ Banks said, perching on the arm of the settee, ‘I know it’s a long time ago, but something might have come up.’

‘You’ve found out who killed her?’

‘It’s possible. But I still don’t know that she was killed. You’ll have to help me.’

The file was still fresh in his mind. Cheryl Duggan had been fished out of the River Cherwell not too far from Magdalen Bridge and St Hilda’s College on a foggy November Sunday morning over six years ago. The coroner’s inquest said that death was due to drowning, or so it appeared. Several odd bruises indicated that her head may have been held under the water until she drowned. She had had sexual intercourse shortly before death, and the stomach contents indicated that she had been drinking heavily the previous evening. In view of all this, an open verdict was recorded and a police investigation was ordered.

To complicate matters, Cheryl Duggan, according to Folley, had been a well known local prostitute since the age of fifteen. She had been only seventeen when she died. The investigation, Folley admitted, had been cursory. This was due to other pressures, in particular the drug-related death of a peer’s daughter in which the heir to a brewery fortune was implicated as a pusher.