The Hanging Valley (27 page)

“In other words, you were worried you might become his next victim.”

“I know it sounds a horrible thing to say about someone you basically like and respect—even loved, perhaps, once—but yes, it did cross my mind. Much easier to disappear, as I’d been thinking of it anyway. And there was no-one to make a fuss about my going.”

“What kind of things did he confide in you about before?”

“Oh, nothing much. Perhaps a slightly shady business deal—he was pleased if he’d put one over on somebody. Or an income-tax fiddle. He hated the inland revenue.”

“Nothing more?”

“No. Not until that time.”

They sipped their drinks and let the conversations flow around them. Julie seemed more relaxed now she had told her story, and Banks could see no traces of that hateful look left in her eyes.

“Did he say anything else about this incident in Oxford?” he asked.

Julie shook her head. “Nothing.”

“So you don’t know what happened there, or who else might have been involved?”

“No. I’m sorry. At the time I never even thought to ask. It was all hard enough to take in as it was.”

Banks sighed. Still, even if he hadn’t uncovered the whole story yet, he’d done well. The trip had been worthwhile. Julie rejoined the others. Banks said his farewells and left. It was about nine o’clock, a hot, humid evening. Instead of taking the bus, he crossed Kingston Road and started walking towards the lake. The road sloped steeply at one point, crossed another main street with tram rails, then a hundred yards or so farther on ended at a beach.

Couples walked hand in hand along the boardwalk or sat on benches and stared out at the water. Some people jogged by, sweating, and others ambled along with dogs on leashes. Banks made his way over the soft sand to where a group of rocks stuck out into the lake. He clambered as far forward as he could and sat down on the
warm stone. Water slopped around just below his feet. The horizon was a broad mauve band; above it, the sky’s pink was tinged with misty grey. Banks lit a cigarette and wondered if it was the United States he could see in the distance or just a low, narrow layer of mist.

He’d got what he came for, though he still couldn’t put everything together. At least when he got back he would be able to question Stephen Collier more thoroughly, no matter what the man’s influence with the deputy chief constable. Collier had killed Raymond Addison, and he might even have killed Bernard Allen too. There was no proof as yet, but Banks would find some if it took him a lifetime. Collier wasn’t going to escape justice because of influence or social position; of that Banks would make sure.

By the time he had finished his cigarette, the sun had gone down much lower and the sky had changed. The horizon was now grey, and the mauve band much higher in the sky. The lake seemed scattered with pink, as if the colour had transformed itself into raindrops and shattered the ice-blue surface of the water. Carefully, Banks got to his feet on the angled rock and made his way back towards a streetcar stop.

III

Earlier that day, back in Swainsdale, Detective Constable Philip Richmond had sat on a knoll high on Adam’s Fell and unwrapped his cheese-and-pickle sandwiches. He flicked away the flies that gathered and poured some coffee from his flask. Up there, the air was pure and sharp; below, the sun glinted on the steel kegs in the backyard of the White Rose and flashed in the fountain playing in the Colliers’ huge garden behind the ugly Gothic mansion. The old men stood on the bridge, and the Greenocks’ front door was closed.

Sam had driven off on one of his regular jaunts to Leeds or Eastvale, and Katie had gone for a walk with Stephen Collier up Swainshead Fell. He thought he could see them across in the northeast, near a patch of grass that was greener than that around it, but it could have been someone else.

Sipping the bitter, black coffee, Richmond had reminded himself that tomorrow was his last day in Swainshead. He was expected back at the station with a report on Sunday morning. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed himself—it had been very much like a week’s holiday—but he longed to get back to his Eastvale mates. Tomorrow the rugby team was playing Skipton, a game he would have to miss. There was always a good booze-up and sing-song after the match, and it would be a shame to miss that too. Jim Hatchley was usually there for the booze, of course. An honorary member they called him now he wasn’t fit enough to play any more. But even the sergeant’s presence didn’t spoil Richmond’s fun: a few jars, a good sing-song, then, with a bit of luck, a kiss and a cuddle with Doreen on the way home. He prided himself on being a man of simple tastes, yet he also liked to think that nothing else about him was simple.

Finishing his sandwich, he unwrapped a Kit-Kat and picked up
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,
the last of the four Philip K. Dick books he’d brought along. But he couldn’t concentrate. He began to wonder why nothing had happened during Banks’s absence. Was the killer certain that the chief inspector would find out nothing in Toronto? Or was there, perhaps, no connection at all between the Addison and Allen murders?

Certainly there had been a bit of a fuss or flap, as Freddie Metcalfe had said, earlier in the week. But it had soon died down and everyone carried on as normal. Was it a false sense of security? The lull before the storm. Perhaps they knew who Richmond was and were being especially careful? He certainly couldn’t keep an eye on all of them.

He stroked his moustache and turned back to his book. Not ours to reason why . . . But still, he thought, an arrest would have helped his career. A thrilling car chase, perhaps, or a cross-country marathon. He pictured himself bringing in the killer, arm twisted up his back, and throwing him in Eastvale nick under Banks’s approving smile. Then he laughed at himself, brushed a persistent wasp away and went back to Philip K. Dick.

IV

That Saturday, the afternoon of his last day in Toronto, Banks went to his first baseball game. The retractable roof was open, and a breeze from the lake relieved some of the humidity at the SkyDome, where the Toronto Blue Jays were playing the New York Yankees, but the temperature was still almost thirty degrees. In England, people would have been fainting from the heat.

Banks and Gregson sat in the stands, ate hotdogs and drank beer out of flimsy plastic cups.

“Lucky to be drinking it at all,” Gregson said when Banks complained. “It took a lot of doing, getting drinking allowed at ball games.”

A fat boy of about twelve sitting next to Banks stopped shovelling barbecue-flavoured potato crisps into his maw to stand up and hurl obscene death-threats at the Yankees’ pitcher. His equally obese mother looked embarrassed but made no attempt to control him.

Banks wished his son, Brian, could be there. Unlike Banks, he had watched enough baseball on Channel 4 to be able to understand the game. When Banks first took his seat, the only baseball term he knew was “home run,” but by the end of the third inning, Gregson had explained all about RBIs, the tops and bottoms of the innings, designated hitters, knuckle balls, the bullpen, bunting, the balk rule, pinch hitters and at least three different kinds of pitches.

The game mounted to an exciting conclusion, and the boy next to him spilled his crisps all over the floor.

Finally, the home crowd went wild. Down five-four at the bottom of the ninth, with two out, the sixth Blue Jay up drove one home with all the bases loaded—a grand slam, Gregson called it. That made the score eight-five, and that was how the game ended.

They pushed their way out of the stadium, and Gregson negotiated the heavy traffic up Spadina to Bloor, where they stopped in at the Madison for a farewell drink.

“Are you planning to do anything about the Culver woman?” Gregson asked.

Banks sipped his pint of Conner bitter. They were out on the patio, and the late afternoon sun beat down on his shoulders.

“No,” he answered. “What did she do, after all?”

“From the sound of it, she withheld evidence. She was a material witness. If she’d spoken up, this new homicide might never have happened.”

Banks shook his head. “She didn’t have much choice really. I know what you mean, but you’ve got to understand what things are like around Swainshead. It’s not like Toronto. She couldn’t tell what she knew. There was loyalty, yes, but there was also fear. The Colliers are a powerful family. If she’d stayed we might have got something out of her, but on the other hand something might have happened to her first.”

“So she left under threat?”

“That’s the way I’d put it, yes.”

“And you think this Collier guy killed Allen because he knew too much?”

“I think it was more to do with what Allen intended to do with his knowledge. I can’t prove it, but I think he was going to blackmail Stephen Collier. Julie Culver disagrees, but from what one of Allen’s boozing buddies told me, he had some plan to get back home to England. I think he asked Collier for the money to come home and live in Swainshead again, or maybe to fix him up with a job. Collier’s brother teaches at a small public school, and Allen was a teacher. Maybe he suggested that Stephen tell Nicholas to get him a job there. Instead, Stephen decided to get rid of Allen the same way he did with Addison.”

“Shit,” said Gregson, “I’d no idea Toronto was so bad that people would stoop to blackmail to get out of here.”

Banks laughed. “Maybe it’s just that Swainsdale is so beautiful people would do anything to get there. I don’t know. Allen was seriously disturbed, I think. A number of things took their toll on him: the divorce, the distance from home, the disappointment of not getting the kind of job that would really challenge his mind. Someone told me that he had gone beyond the parochial barriers of most English teachers, but he found himself in a system that placed no value on the exceptional, a system that almost imposed such barriers. The teaching he was doing was dreary, the students were ignorant and uninterested, and I think he tended to blame it
on the local educational system. He thought things would be better in England. He probably remembered his own grammar-school days when even poor kids got to learn Latin, and he thought things were still like that. Perhaps he didn’t even think he was doing anything really bad when he approached Collier. Or maybe he did. He had plenty of cause to resent him.”

“That old British class system again?”

“Partly. It’s hard to figure Allen out. Mostly, he seems like a decent person gone wrong, but he also had a big chip on his shoulder all along. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what really motivated him.”

“But you do have your killer.”

“Yes—if he hasn’t done a bunk. But we’ve no proof yet.”

“He knows you’re here, onto the girl?”

“The whole village knows. We’ve got a man there.”

“Well, then . . . What time’s your flight?”

“Nine o’clock.” He looked at his watch. “Christ, it’s six now. I’d better get back and pick up my stuff.”

“I’ll drive you,” Gregson said. “I’m off duty all day, and it can be a real hassle getting to the airport.”

“Would you? That’s great.”

At the house, Banks packed his meagre belongings and the presents he had bought for his family, then left a thank-you note with the bottle of Scotch for Gerry. In a way, he felt sad to leave the house and neighbourhood that had become familiar to him over the past week: the sound of streetcars rattling by; the valley with its expressway and green slopes; the downtown skyline; the busy, overflowing Chinese shops at Broadview and Gerrard.

The traffic along Lakeshore Boulevard to the airport turn-off wasn’t too heavy, and they made it with plenty of time to spare. The two policemen swapped addresses and invitations outside the departures area, then Gregson drove straight off home. Banks didn’t blame him. He’d always hated hanging around airports himself if he didn’t have a plane to catch.

After the queue at the check-in desk, the trip to the duty-free shop, and the passage through security and immigration, it was almost time to board the plane. As they took off, Banks looked out
of the window and saw the city lit up in the twilight below him: grids and figure-eights of light as far as he could see in every direction except south, where he could pick out the curve of the bay and the matt silver-grey of Lake Ontario.

Once in the air, it was on with the Walkman—Kiri te Kanawa’s soaring arias seemed most appropriate this time—down the hatch with the Johnny Walker, and away with the food. A seasoned traveller already. This time even the movie was tolerable. A suspense thriller without the car chases and special effects that so often marred that type of film for Banks, it concentrated on the psychology of policeman and victim.

He slept for a while, managed to choke down the coffee and roll that came for breakfast, and looked out of the window to see the sun shining over Ireland.

It was going on for ten o’clock in the morning, local time, when he’d cleared customs and reclaimed his baggage. Among the crowd of people waiting to welcome friends and relatives stood Sandra, who threw her arms around him and gave him a long kiss.

“I told Brian and Tracy they should come, too,” she said, breaking away and picking up the duty-free bag, “but you know what they’re like about sleeping in on Sunday mornings.”

“So it’s not that they don’t love me any more?”

“Don’t be silly. They’ve missed you as much as I have. Almost.” She kissed him again, and they set off for the car.

“It’s a bloody maze, this place,” Sandra complained, “and they really fleece you for parking. Then there’s roadworks everywhere on the way. They’re still working on Barton bridge, you know. It was misty, too, high up in the Pennines. Oh, I am going on, aren’t I? I’m just so glad to see you. You must be tired.”

Banks stifled a yawn. “It’s five in the morning where I am. Where I was, rather. And I can’t sleep on planes. Anything interesting happen while I was away?”

Sandra frowned and hesitated. “I wasn’t going to tell you,” she said, loading the small case and the duty-free bag into the boot of the white Cortina, “at least not until we got home. Superintendent Gristhorpe called this morning just before I set off.”