Peter Robinson - A Necessary End

Banks drove through Keighley and Haworth into open country, with Haworth Moor on his right and Oxenhope Moor on his left. Even in the bright sun of that springlike day, the landscape looked sinister and brooding. Sandra hated it; it was too spooky and barren for her. But Banks found something magical about the area, with its legends of witches, mad Methodist preachers, and the tales the Bronte sisters had spun.

Banks slipped a cassette in the stereo and Robert Johnson sang "Hellhound on My Trail." West Yorkshire was a long way from the Mississippi delta, but the dark, jagged edges of Johnson's guitar seemed to limn the landscape, and his haunted, doom-laden lyrics captured its mood.

Dominated by mill-towns at the valley bottoms and weaving communities on the heights, the place is a product of the Industrial Revolution. Majestic old mills with their tall chimneys of dark, grainy millstone grit still remain. Many have now been scoured of two hundred years' soot and set up as craft and antiques markets.

Hebden Bridge is a mill-town turned tourist trap, full of bookshops and antique shops. Not so long ago, it was a centre of trouser and corduroy manufacturing, but since the seventies, when the hippies from Leeds and Manchester invaded, it has been more of a place for arts festivals, poetry readings in pubs and other cultural activities.

Banks drove down the steep hill from the moors into the town itself. Rows of tall terraced houses run at angles diagonally along the hillside and overlook the mills at the valley bottom. They look like four-storey houses, but are actually rows of two-storey houses built one on top of the other. You enter the lower house from a street or ginnel at one level, and the upper from a higher one at the back. All of which made it very difficult for Banks to find Reginald Lee's house.

Lee, Banks had discovered from his phone call to PC Brooks of the Hebden Bridge police, was a retired shop owner living in one of the town's two-tiered buildings. Just over three years ago he had been involved in an accident on the town's busy main street — a direct artery along the Calder valley from east to west — which had resulted in the death of Alison, Seth Cotton's wife.

Banks had also discovered from the police that there had been nothing suspicious about her death, and that Mr Lee had not been at fault. But he wanted to know more about Seth Cotton's background, and it seemed that the death of his wife was a good place to start. He was still convinced that the number written so boldly in the old notebook was PC Gill's and not just part of a coincidentally similar calculation. Whether Seth himself had written it down was another matter.

Lee, a small man in a baggy, threadbare pullover, answered the door and frowned at Banks. He clearly didn't get many visitors. His thinning grey hair was uncombed, sticking up on end in places as if he'd had an electric shock, and the room he finally showed Banks into was untidy but clean. It was also chilly. Banks kept his jacket on.

"Sorry about the mess," Lee said in a high-pitched, whining voice. "Wife died two years back and I just can't seem to get the hang of housework."

"I know what you mean." Banks moved some newspapers from a hard-backed chair. "My wife's been away at her mother's for two weeks now and the house feels like it's falling apart. Mind if I smoke?"

"Not at all." Lee shuffled to the sideboard and brought an ashtray. "What can I help you with?"

"I'm sorry to bring all this up again," Banks said. "I know it must be painful for you, but it's about that accident you were involved in about three years ago."

Lee's eyes seemed to glaze over at the mention. "Ah, yes," he said. "I blame that for Elsie's death, too, you know. She was with me at the time, and she never got over it. I retired early myself. Couldn't seem to…" He lost his train of thought and stared at the empty fireplace.

"Mr Lee?"

"What? Oh, sorry, Inspector. It is Inspector, isn't it?"

"It'll do," Banks said. "The accident."

"Ah, yes. What is it you want to know?"

"Just what happened, in as much detail as you can remember."

"Oh, I can remember it all." He tapped his forehead. "It's all engraved there in slow motion. Just let me get my pipe. It seems to help me concentrate. I have a bit of trouble keeping my mind on track these days." He fetched a briar from a rack by the fireplace, filled it with rubbed twist and put a match to it. The tobacco flamed up and blue smoke curled from the bowl. A child's skipping rhyme drifted in from the street: Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, Kiss the girls and make them cry.

"Where was I?"

"The accident."

"Ah, yes. Well, it happened on a lovely summer's day. The sixteenth of July. One of those days when you can smell the moorland heather and the wild flowers even here in town. Not a cloud in the sky and everyone in that relaxed, dozy mood you get in summer. Elsie and I were going for a ride to Hardcastle Crags. We used to do a lot of our courting up there when we were youngsters, like. So whenever the weather was good, off we went. I wasn't doing more than thirty — and I hadn't a drop of drink in me, never touch the stuff — when I came upon this lass riding along on her bicycle on my inside." He faltered, sucked at his pipe as if it were an oxygen mask, and carried on. "She was a bit wobbly, but then a lot of cyclists are. I always took special care when there were cyclists around. Then it happened. My front wheels were a foot or two away from her back. She was over by the kerb, like, not directly in front of me, and she just keeled over."

"Just like that?"

"Aye." He seemed amazed, even though he must have told the story dozens of times to the police. "As if she'd hit a jutting stone. But there wasn't one. She might have bounced off the kerb or something. And she fell right in front of the car. I'd no time to stop. Even if I'd only been going five miles an hour I wouldn't have had time. She went right under the wheels. Keeled over, just like that."

Banks let the silence stretch. Tobacco crackled in the pipe bowl and the repetitive chant continued outside. "You said she was wobbling a bit," he asked finally. "Did she seem drunk or anything?"

"Not especially. Just like she was a learner, maybe."

"Have you ever come across a policeman by the name of Edwin Gill. PC 1139?"

"Eh? Pardon me. No, the name and number aren't familiar. It was PC Brooks I dealt with at first. Then Inspector Cummings. I don't remember any Gill. Is he from around here?"

"Did you ever meet Seth Cotton?"

"Yes," Lee said, relighting his pipe. "I plucked up the courage to go and see him in the hospital. He knew all the details and said he didn't blame me. He was very forgiving. Of course, he was in a shocking state, still beside himself with grief and anger. But not at me. I only went the once."

"In hospital? What was he doing there?"

Lee looked surprised. "I thought you'd have known. He tried to kill himself a couple of days after the hospital phoned him about the accident. Slit his ankles. And they say he smashed the phone to bits. But someone found him before it was too late. Have you seen the lad lately?"

"Yes."

"And how is he?"

"He seems to be doing all right." Banks told him about the farm and the carpentry.

"Aye," Lee said. "He mentioned he were a carpenter." He shook his head slowly.

"Terrible state he were in. Bad enough losing the lass, but the baby as well…."

"Baby?"

"Aye. Didn't you know? She were pregnant. Five months. The police said she might have fainted, like, had a turn, because of her condition…."

Lee seemed to drift off again, letting his pipe go out. Banks couldn't think of any more questions, so he stood up to leave. Lee noticed and snapped out of his daze.

"Off, are you?" he said. "Sure you won't stay for a cup of tea?"