Peter Robinson - Sleeping in the Ground

‘I suppose I knew it was bound to happen,’ he said eventually. ‘Gerry will be devastated.’

‘I heard about DC Masterson in the churchyard,’ said Gervaise. ‘She’ll be fine, Alan. She’s young and resilient. It’s you I’m worried about.’

Banks gave her a flicker of a smile. ‘Me being old and weak?’

‘You having had rather too much misery for one weekend. I wasn’t there, but I understand Katie Shea was in very poor shape.’

‘She was holding her guts in with her hands and a bit of material Terry had found for her,’ Banks said. ‘Begging for help, but the bloody gunslingers didn’t get there for three-quarters of an hour, and it was almost as long again before they let any medics in.’

‘You know that’s the protocol, Alan. It was nobody’s fault. Certainly not the AFOs’. Nobody but the killer’s.’

‘Even so...’

‘You’d like to throttle someone. I understand.’

Banks drank some more beer. For the second night in a row he felt like getting rat-arsed, but he couldn’t. He had a feeling that no matter how much he drank, it would have no effect on him, anyway; it wouldn’t take the anger and sadness away, would hardly even dull it. A sudden image of Katie Shea propped against the gravestone flashed through his mind. The expression on her face, the fear, pain and despair there, as if she knew what was going to happen, knew she was down to her last few sacred minutes on earth. Perhaps he was being fanciful, but that was what he had felt. A young woman who not long earlier had her whole life ahead of her was now facing certain death, and she knew it. He didn’t know whether Katie had any religious faith. That might have given her some comfort towards the end. Banks hoped so, for her sake, though he had no such faith himself. He remembered, too, the look on Gerry’s face. She had seen death before, but nothing quite like Katie. It had shaken her to the core. Yes, she was young and resilient, but she wouldn’t forget that day in St Mary’s churchyard; she would carry it with her always; it would change her.

‘Don’t make it personal,’ Gervaise went on. ‘Your old sweetheart’s death is personal, but this is what your job is about. It wasn’t only Katie Shea. Laura Tindall died from a gunshot wound to the heart. Her maid of honour had her head almost blown off. Need I go on?’

Banks shook his head and finished his drink. Gervaise had about three-quarters of a pint left.

‘Want another?’ she said. ‘Or a whisky perhaps?’

‘Are you trying to get me drunk, ma—’ Banks managed to stop himself before he got the title out.

‘Furthest thing from my mind, but you’ve got an empty glass in front of you, and you’re not going anywhere yet. Don’t worry about driving. Leave your car and I’ll drop you off home.’ She pushed her beer aside. ‘I don’t even want this. I’m a white wine spritzer girl, myself. So what’s it to be?’

‘Macallan, please,’ said Banks. ‘If that’s OK.’ He couldn’t face another beer.

With that, Gervaise went to the bar and got him another drink. ‘Cyril said it’s on the house,’ she said when she got back. ‘Double. Says you look as if you need it.’

Banks glanced over at Cyril, who gave him a nod and a wink. ‘Taking bribes from the publican,’ he said. ‘What will it come to next?’ The song changed. Skeeter Davis, ‘The End of the World’.

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ he went on. ‘But thanks for telling me in person, not over the phone, and thanks for the drinks. That makes four dead now, right?’

‘Yes. And Benjamin Kemp is hanging on by a thread. They don’t think he’ll make it through the night.’

‘What about Diana Lofthouse?’

‘The spinal cord was severed. There were other injuries, internal organs, but that’s by far the worst. It’s unlikely she’ll walk again. As yet, they’re not sure if she’ll be a quad or a para.’

‘What a bloody mess. And we’ve no leads at all so far yet.’

‘It’s early days,’ said Gervaise. ‘There is one more thing, though, and it might be something of a development. When the surgeons were working on Katie Shea, they discovered that she was pregnant. The foetus was unharmed by the gunshot, but, of course, it didn’t survive. She wasn’t married — not that that means anything these days — but there has to be a father somewhere.’

‘And we’ll find him,’ said Banks. ‘How far along was she?’

‘I don’t know all the details yet. Dr Glendenning will be doing the post-mortem tomorrow morning, so we’ll no doubt find out more then.’

‘There it is for you,’ said Dr Glendenning. ‘The tally. Nicely laid out in layman’s terms as close as I could get to the order they were hit in, according to your notes.’

Banks read the list clipped to Dr Glendenning’s post-mortem reports. Ten bullets, nine hits:

Laura Elizabeth Tindall, age 32, bride. Residence: London. Deceased .

Benjamin Lewis Kemp, age 33, groom. Residence: Northallerton. Critical .

Francesca Muriel, age 29, maid of honour. Residence: London. Deceased .

Luke Merrifield, age 42, photographer. Residence: Eastvale. Damage to right eye .

David Ronald Hurst, age 30, guest. Residence: Harrogate. Minor flesh wound .

Winsome Jackman, age 33, guest. Residence: Eastvale. Minor flesh wound .

Diana Lofthouse, age 30, bridesmaid. Residence: Ripon. Spinal cord injury .

Kathleen Louise Shea, age 30, bridesmaid. Residence: Leeds. Deceased .

Charles Morgan Kemp, age 59, father of groom. Residence: Northallerton. Deceased .

‘So Benjamin Kemp is still alive?’ Banks said.

‘For now. His liver’s done for. If I were a gambling man, I wouldn’t give much for his chances.’

Dr Glendenning seemed tired, Banks thought. It was hardly any wonder; he was getting on in years, and he had been bending over dead bodies almost non-stop since Sunday afternoon. He had help, of course. His chief anatomical pathology technologist Karen Galway and two trainee pathologists were working with him, all of them still busy at the stainless-steel tables in the autopsy suite next door. Even so, the long hours showed in his watery eyes behind the black-framed glasses and in his drawn, pale flesh. His white coat had been smeared with blood and worse when Banks had arrived, and he had removed it and dropped it in a bin before sitting behind his desk. He wore a white shirt and maroon tie under his herringbone jacket.

‘Finished?’ Banks asked.

Glendenning raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘With the dead? Aye. For now.’ He took a packet of Benson & Hedges out of his waistcoat pocket and lit one. Smoking was strictly prohibited in the building, but no one dared tell him that. He was more careful these days, though, Banks had noticed, and he didn’t actually smoke while he was working on a body. Watching Glendenning light up brought on one of Banks’s own rare cravings, which surprised him with its urgency and power. He fought it back.

‘It’s not strictly my business,’ Glendenning went on, ‘but you’ve got a lot of psychologically wounded people out there. What are you going to do with them?’

‘Most of them have friends and relatives already with them. There’s also counselling sessions going on.’

‘Poor sods. You come to a wedding and it ends up a funeral.’

‘I know,’ said Banks. ‘There’s something not quite right about that.’

Glendenning scrutinised him. ‘I may not be the picture of health myself, but you certainly seem the worse for wear. Been sleeping properly?’

‘Not much.’

‘Eating?’