Peter Robinson - A Dedicated Man

‘I’m not admitting anything.’

‘Where were you at four o’clock on Friday afternoon?’

‘I was here practising. Why?’

‘Anybody with you?’

‘No. There usually isn’t when I practise.’

‘Did you receive any telephone calls?’

Penny looked confused. ‘Telephone calls? No. What are you getting at?’

‘And you refuse to tell me what you did during the interval on Friday evening?’

‘Wait a minute. Sally. Sally Lumb. She disappeared on Friday, didn’t she? Christ, you bastard!’ She glared at Banks. Angry tears made her eyes glitter. ‘Are you implying that I had something to do with that?’

‘What did you do?’

‘If you already know, why do you want me to tell you?’

‘I need to hear it from you.’

Penny sagged in her chair and looked away. ‘All right. So we came back here and smoked a couple of joints. Big deal. Is that what you wanted to hear? What are you going to do now, bring in the dogs and tear the place apart?’

Banks stood up to leave. ‘I’m not going to do anything. I remember the difference between the last set and the first, how you seemed more remote, detached. If it’s any consolation to you,’ he said, opening the door, ‘I believe you, and I’m glad I was right.’

But Penny didn’t move or say anything to make his exit easier.

Later, as Penny lay in bed that night unable to sleep, the images came again, just as they had been coming ever since Harold Steadman’s death: those summers so long ago – innocent, idyllic. Or so they had seemed.

It was a time she had had neither reason nor inclination to think about over the past ten years – the kind of period, like an idealized childhood, that one looks back on when one gets older and life loses its edge. Life had been too busy, too exciting, and when she finally had crashed, she had been as far in her mind from idyllic summers as ever a person could be. It had seemed, then, that her earlier life had been lived by somebody else. Next she had come back to Helmthorpe, where they were all together again. Now Harold was dead and that wretched detective was probing, asking questions, churning up memories, like tides stir sand.

So she re-examined it. She reran the walks to Wensleydale along the Pennine Way and the drives to Richmond or the Lake District in Harold’s old Morris 1100 like old movies, and she spotted things she had never noticed at the time – little things, vague and unclear, but certainly disturbing. And the more she thought about old times, the less she liked what she was thinking.

She turned over again and tried to cast the images from her mind. They were like dreams, she told herself. She had taken the truth, in all its purity, and warped it in her imagination. That must be what had happened. The problem was that now these dreams seemed so real. She couldn’t shake them, and she wouldn’t rest until she knew what was fantasy and what was reality. How could the past, something that had really happened, become so altered, so unclear? And as she finally drifted towards sleep, she began to wonder what she should do about it.

The numerous becks that ran down the slopes of Swainsdale to the river were flowing copiously, bringing rainwater from the higher land. A fine mist, like baby’s hair, rose from the valley sides as the sun warmed the waterlogged earth. The colours were newly rinsed, too; fresh vibrant greens sloped up from the road, and bright skullcaps of purple heather, softened by the thin veil of mist, fringed the peaks.

Penny, walking with Jack Barker along High Street, was the first to notice a small crowd gathered on the bridge, under which a combination of becks, grown almost to the strength of a river themselves, cascaded from the southern heights down to the Swain.

A woman in a sleeveless yellow dress was pointing up the valley side, and the others followed her gaze, leaning over the low stone parapet. Penny and Barker soon reached the spot and stopped to see what the excitement was. They had an uninterrupted view up the dale side along the beck’s course, on to which backed several gardens full of bright flowers. Some distance away they could see what looked like a child’s rag doll tumbling recklessly down the swollen stream. It was hypnotic, Penny thought, to watch the thing turn cartwheels and flail, snag on the rocks and break free as the water pushed and dragged it.

Then the woman in the yellow dress put her hand over her mouth and gasped. The others, including Penny, whose long-distance eyesight had never been good, leaned further over and screwed up their eyes to peer more closely. It was only after the shock wave had rippled through the crowd that Penny realized what was happening. It was not a rag doll that came head over heels down the stream, but a body. Tufts of clothing still clung to the torn flesh. It looked raw, like a side of beef in a butcher’s window; patches of skin had been ripped clean off, hair torn away from the scalp, and splintered bones stuck through at elbows and shins.

There was no face to recognize, but Penny knew, as did all the other locals on the bridge, that it was the body of Sally Lumb come back to the village where she was born.

Penny wrenched her eyes away while Barker and the others still stared in disbelief. Somebody mentioned an ambulance, somebody else the police, and the group split up in chaos.

Penny and Barker walked in a daze until they got to the Hare and Hounds, then they went inside and ordered double Scotches.

‘Seen a ghost?’ the barman asked.

‘Something like that,’ Barker said, and gave a garbled version of what had happened. Soon, customers went streaming out to look, leaving drinks on tables, cardigans and handbags on chairs.

The barman gave them each another double Scotch on the house and rushed off to see himself. The pub was empty; anybody could have walked in and robbed the place blind, but nobody did. Penny downed the fiery whisky; she was aware of her hand gripping Barker’s so tight that the nails must have dug into his flesh.

‘It’s a bugger, Alan,’ Gristhorpe said, rubbing his eyes, which had lost much of their childlike innocence through lack of sleep. He looked tired, pale and hurt, as if the whole affair, done right on his doorstep, was a personal affront. ‘A bugger…’

They were in the Queen’s Arms opposite the station, and it was almost afternoon closing time. Only a few dedicated drinkers and tourists in need of a late sandwich and shandy sat scattered around the lounge.

‘We’ve got nothing so far,’ the superintendent went on, sniffing as Banks lit a cigarette. ‘The body was so bloody waterlogged and badly battered Glendenning couldn’t give us any idea of what killed her. For all he can say, she might have fallen in and hit her head, or just drowned. A full autopsy’s going to take time, and even then they can’t promise owt.’

‘What’s Glendenning doing now?’

‘You know him, Alan – couldn’t wait to get at it. Stomach contents, organs, tissue samples. God knows, they’ve got to keep looking. It could even be poison.’

‘What do you think?’ Banks asked, sipping his pint of Theakston’s bitter.

Gristhorpe shook his head. ‘I don’t know. They’ve got their jobs to do. Does it matter what killed her at this point? If we’re right, and it’s what we think it is, there was probably just a blow to the head, like Steadman. Glendenning might not even be able to verify that.’

‘I just wish we knew a bit more about why it happened,’ Banks said. ‘Certainly I think there’s a connection to the Steadman case – has to be – I just don’t know what it is. The girl knew something and instead of coming to me she confronted the killer. I suppose she wasn’t sure and simply wanted to find out for herself. Add it all up and we’ve still got nothing. So she knew something. What? She phoned someone. Who? Why? They met. Where?’