Peter Robinson: Sleeping in the Ground

A hand went up. ‘Isn’t it possible we’re dealing with terrorists, sir?’

‘It’s a possibility, and one we overlook only at our peril. We already have counter-terrorist officers working the case up here. Special Branch and MI5 are involved, too, I understand. I’d advise you all to stay well out of their way, as they’re a none-too-friendly bunch. All I do know so far is that there has been no chatter, and that no group has claimed responsibility. But you know as well as I do that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Any more questions?’

There were none.

‘OK.’ Banks checked his watch. ‘Unless you have already been given a specific duty or action to perform, you’d better get home and get some rest. I’ll want everyone back in early tomorrow morning, and if we don’t get a break soon, you can look forward to a few sleepless nights. I know it’s Sunday tomorrow, a tough day to track down leads. You won’t find a government office open on a Sunday, for example, even if it were Armageddon, but there’s still plenty to be done. You may also have already noticed we’re inundated by media. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but keep your mouths shut. Everything goes through our media liaison officer, Adrian Moss. Area Commander Gervaise has scheduled a press conference in an hour, just in time for the ten o’clock news. That’ll have to be enough for them right now. And it goes without saying that all leave is cancelled until we catch this bastard.’

It said something of the way everyone felt about this crime that not one groan rose up from the men and women gathered in the boardroom, and that there was no usual rush for the door to be the first one out.

‘Quick coffee before the press conference?’ Banks asked Annie in the corridor outside the boardroom.

‘Not tonight, thanks.’

‘Hot date?’

‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

‘What about Nick Fleming? How are things going?’

‘You know about Nick?’

‘It’s my business to know everything.’

‘Sure. Well, it’s fine. What about you? How’s your poet?’

‘Linda Palmer? Just a friend. She’s teaching me about poetry.’ Banks had been looking forward to talking with Linda about Hardy’s Poems of 1912–1913 , but he hadn’t read them yet and doubted he would get the time. Suddenly Keats’s Grecian urn seemed a long way away and a long time ago.

‘Is that the literary equivalent of come up and see my etchings? Come up and see my odes?’

Banks laughed. ‘Don’t be cheeky.’

‘Anyway,’ Annie went on, ‘it’s not a date. It’s Ray. He’s thinking of moving up here, and he wants to stay at mine until he’s found somewhere suitable.’

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yeah, it’s fine. He’s fine. It’s just... he wants to stay with me while he’s house-hunting.’

‘Is that a problem?’

‘Alan, don’t be thick. You know how tiny my cottage is. It’s like living in a bloody thimble, even on my own.’

‘True,’ said Banks, remembering his days and nights at the little terraced cottage in the centre of the labyrinth. It was years ago now, but he still had good memories of the brief time when he and Annie had been lovers, before work and careers got in the way.

‘He can come and stay with me if he likes,’ said Banks. ‘I’ve got plenty of room.’

Annie’s eyes lit up. ‘Really? He’d like that.’

‘Of course. We get along well enough.’

‘Well, you like the same music and stuff. I mean, he was listening to Bob Dylan when you were still wearing short trousers.’

‘I was listening to Bob Dylan when I was still wearing short trousers.’

‘You know what I mean. You’re about the same generation, so you should have something in common.’

‘Same generation? He’s got at least ten years on me.’

‘Doesn’t mean so much when you get to your age, though, does it?’

‘Less of your lip, or I’ll change my mind.’

Annie held her hand up, palm out. ‘All right, all right. I’m sorry. He might as well stay with me for the weekend, then I’ll send him over to you on Monday, if that’s OK? And I’ll be eternally grateful.’

‘You’d better be.’ Banks reached into his pocket and worked one of the keys off his chain. ‘That’s a spare,’ he said. ‘He knows where I live. Tell him to make himself at home. He’ll probably need to get some food in. And I’ll most likely be late. And if you want rid of him sooner, tell him it’s folk night at the Dog and Gun tonight and tomorrow, if he’s interested. With a bit of luck, I might just make it tonight myself.’

Annie rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll be sure to tell him to take his anorak along.’

Banks arrived at the Dog and Gun just in time for last orders and joined the crush at the bar, but he didn’t see Ray there. After the kind of day he’d had, he didn’t feel like going straight home to a dark and empty house. He wanted people, noise, music, perhaps even company, a bit of harmless blethering to take his mind off things. Finally, pint in hand, he edged his way out of the crowd and found space to lean against the wall. He spotted a few people he recognised, said hello, exchanged a brief pleasantry or two. It might have been his imagination, but he thought he sensed a stunned, subdued atmosphere about the place, which no doubt had something to do with the tragic and bloody events that had taken place only a few miles down the road.

The press conference had gone about as well as could be expected, the best part of it being that Banks himself had hardly had to say a word. Chief Superintendent Gervaise and Adrian Moss had done most of the talking. After the short announcement, which said nothing, but said it quite eloquently, the usual questions tumbled out, many Banks would have asked himself, had he been a reporter. Terrorists. Nutters. Mass murderers. As expected, news of the delay suffered by emergency services had leaked, and the most persistent inquisitors demanded to know how much time had been wasted and how many people had died because of a lack of trained firearms officers. As Banks had expected, that progressed to, ‘Shouldn’t more police be armed?’ which then led to, ‘Shouldn’t all police be armed?’

And so it went on, comparisons with American school shootings, with Raoul Moat and Derrick Bird, even insinuations that refugees, migrants or asylum seekers might have been involved. Banks had been glad to get out of there, which he did as surreptitiously as he could, when the subject turned to how the NHS was coping with the A & E overload and what the waiting times for victims were.

The band finished their instrumental, and the guitar player introduced the final song, a solo by singer Carol Langland. She seemed very young, hardly older than eighteen, with short, spiky blond-and-pink hair, more punk than folk, and a ring through her right nostril and stud through her lower lip, wearing a black KURT COBAIN T-shirt and jeans torn at the knees. Banks hadn’t noticed her at first, as she had been standing in the shadows while the band played, but now the musicians all walked offstage and left her there alone.

A hush fell on the audience and Carol Langland started singing an unaccompanied version of ‘Farewell, Farewell’, Richard Thompson’s words set to a haunting traditional melody. You could hear the proverbial pin drop, and there was little doubt in anyone’s mind, Banks thought, that the farewells were for the dead of St Mary’s. Carol’s voice was a pure and clear contralto, with just a hint of husky tremor, though not so much that she sounded like Sandy Denny.

Banks leaned against the stone wall sipping his pint of Daleside bitter and let the music wash over and into him, stilling some of the day’s anguish and confusion. His head ached, and his stomach felt permanently clenched, but her voice was so full of youthful yearning and the poignancy of experience beyond her years that it touched him through his pain. He felt the muscles in his neck and shoulders relax and the tension headache disappear. The voice, the melody, the words sent tingles up his spine and brought hot moist tears to his eyes. Tears for Laura Tindall, Francesca Muriel, Charles Kemp, Katie Shea and the rest of the wounded who were lying in hospital beds not knowing whether they would see tomorrow. Tears, too, for Emily Hargreaves, who definitely wouldn’t.