Peter Robinson: Sleeping in the Ground

‘Soon as possible. Right away.’

Annie dropped her fork. ‘You mean... like now? Today?’

‘That’s what right away usually means. Not today, perhaps, but after the weekend. Monday. Why? Is there some problem?’

‘No. No. It’s just that I could have used a little warning, that’s all. I thought this was a preliminary visit. A recce, like. I mean, don’t you have to go back and turn off the water or pack a bag or something?’

‘Sorry, love. All done. At least until I find somewhere.’

‘Can’t be helped, I suppose. What about your paintings?’

‘Zelda’s taking care of them. I can trust her.’

‘Zelda?’

‘Long story. So it’s OK, then? I can stay?’

‘Of course you can. As if there was ever any question.’ There was no way Annie could turn him away. He was her father. He had brought her up, had always been there for her — well, almost always — had loved her and cared for her, even if he hadn’t made a lot of personal sacrifices to do so. He hadn’t changed his lifestyle, for one thing, which had made her childhood interesting, to say the least.

But her cottage was so tiny, and the walls were so thin. It would mean an end to nights with Nick until... well, who knew how long it would take Ray to find a suitable Yorkshire cottage? He was an artist, after all, and he would need a studio, somewhere the light was right, preferably with a fine panorama. He could be fussy, demanding and hard to please, despite his laissez-faire demeanour. It was a lot to ask, and it would be expensive. Still, she also knew that he was successful and not without funds. He did a brisk trade in Cornwall during tourist season — landscapes, seascapes and portraits — but his more serious Impressionist-influenced work hung in respectable galleries and fetched ever-increasing prices. At least he wouldn’t be a financial burden.

‘Of course,’ he said, as if reading her mind, ‘I could always afford a hotel or a B and B, if that’s what you’d prefer?’

Annie thumped his arm playfully. ‘Don’t talk daft. I told you. You can stay at mine till you get somewhere.’

Annie’s mobile rang, its ‘Winkworth Gong’ ringtone imitating the bell of a sixties’ police car. ‘Sorry, got to answer this,’ she said. ‘Work.’

She walked out into the street and put the phone to her ear. It was Chief Superintendent Gervaise, the Eastvale Regional Area Commander, and her voice sounded tight, urgent. ‘We’ve got a serious incident. Shooting at a wedding. St Mary’s church near Fortford. Nothing clear on how many casualties yet. All hell’s breaking loose around here so you’d better get out there ASAP. And see if you can get hold of Detective Superintendent Banks. He should be on his way back from Peterborough by now.’

Annie could hear voices in the background, shouts, phones ringing, heavy footsteps. As she said, ‘Yes, guv,’ the only thing she could think of was Winsome. Her friend and colleague DS Winsome Jackman was supposed to be going to a wedding at St Mary’s, Fortford, today.

Feeling light-headed and sleepy from the hastily consumed second glass of wine and early morning, Banks was glad to find that he had two seats to himself, facing forward. The previous evening, he had compiled a playlist on his computer and downloaded it on to his iPod for the train home. He leaned back, adjusted his headphones and cocooned himself in his own little world as he watched the landscape flash by through half-closed eyes.

He enjoyed the lush countryside of the English heartland. Even now, in December, the sun was shining on fields of stubble and distant rolling hills. Now and then the train would flash by a village, or he would catch sight of a steeple or squat Norman church tower in the distance, a stately home on top of a rise. Car windshields flashed in the sun. People walked their dogs down country lanes.

There was a stretch he particularly liked, a series of small lakes separated by grassy banks and copses, where he could usually spot at least two or three fishermen sitting far apart with their rods angled, lines far out in the calm water. The sight always made Banks want to take up fishing. There they sat like Buddhas, still and contemplative, waiting for the bite, the twitch, nirvana. Maybe they were thinking of the bills they had to pay, or the office girl’s tits, but they always seemed so focused on the sublime, so at one with the elements. The only times Banks had been fishing, he had been bored silly, and he hadn’t caught so much as a stickleback.

As the train sped by the ponds, Banks found himself listening to Andy Roberts singing ‘Gliders and Parks’, which he had included because it reminded him of the day he had met Emily in Hyde Park and she had ended their relationship. It wasn’t so much the narrative as the mood the song created. That was followed by ‘First Boy I Loved’ by Judy Collins, then Roy Harper’s ‘I’ll See You Again’. He knew he was indulging himself in gross sentimentality, not to mention nostalgia, but he didn’t care. It was his death, his mourning, and he would cry if he wanted to.

But he didn’t.

Memories of Emily didn’t cascade effortlessly in his mind, though he could picture her standing before him, the little scar on her upper lip where she had fallen off her tricycle as a young girl, the way it twisted when she smiled; her pale, smooth complexion, waves of long blond hair tumbling over her shoulders. He had always told her that she reminded him of Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago , and it was true that there had been something luminous about her, as if the light always favoured her eyes and lips. But Emily was no ethereal being; she could be earthy, impulsive, even crude. She laughed a lot, he remembered, but she could be serious, too. And she was moody, mercurial. There were times when it had been exceedingly difficult to get through to her at all, when she had remained a silent, aloof and enigmatic presence, especially towards the end of their relationship.

They had listened to Ziggy Stardust when it first came out, and he did remember that ‘Starman’ had been one of Emily’s favourites from the beginning. He was stunned to discover she had still liked it enough that she chose to have it played at her funeral. But he hadn’t known much about her recent life at all. He hadn’t even known that she worked for Médicins Sans Frontières. If Dave hadn’t clipped the death notice from the local paper and sent it to him, he wouldn’t even have known that she had died. When your friends and lovers start dying, you begin to feel as if you have only narrowly escaped the reaper yourself, and that it’s only a matter of time. Which, of course, it is. In the meantime, there’s a version of survivor’s guilt to deal with.

He found himself wondering if Emily’s children would find anything of him when they cleared out her house. Would they find old photo albums and mementos of events and experiences meaningless to them? Rock concert posters? Ticket stubs? Love letters? Postcards? The Tibetan bracelet he had given her for her birthday? The silver ring?

The train stopped at Newark, then Doncaster. When the food trolley rattled by, Banks stirred himself and bought a cup of coffee and a Penguin biscuit, opened the tray by the empty seat beside him and set them down.

It always took less time to get from Doncaster to York than he expected, and soon after York came Northallerton. His stop. He switched off his iPod halfway through George Harrison’s ‘All Things Must Pass’ and put it in his briefcase beside an anthology of English poetry he hadn’t opened for a few days. The last poem he had read was Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, which he had enjoyed very much.

He had turned off his mobile for the funeral service and forgot to turn it back on again. Now, as he prepared to get off the train, he did so. The infernal thing practically exploded in his hand with urgent messages and texts. Something seriously bad had happened while he had been away. Juggling the phone in one hand and his briefcase in the other, he walked along the platform and listened to the first message from DI Annie Cabbot.