The Hanging Valley (6 page)

“Wendy’s,” Banks said. “That’s a burger chain. There’s a few branches in London. Look at those prices, though.”

Hatchley shrugged. “If it was in London . . .”

“Come on! Even in London you don’t pay two pounds sixty-nine pee just for a bloody hamburger. At least not at Wendy’s you don’t. You don’t pay eighty-five pee for a Coke, either. What does that tax work out at?”

Hatchley took out his pocket calculator and struggled with the figures. “Eight percent,” he announced finally.

“Hmm. That’s an odd amount. You don’t pay eight percent tax on food in England.”

“I suppose it’s an American company,” Hatchley suggested, “if they sell hamburgers?”

“You mean our man’s an American?”

“Or he could have just come back from a trip there.”

“He could have. But that’d make it a bit soon for another holiday, wouldn’t it? Unless he was a businessman. What about the labels on his clothes?”

“Torn off,” Hatchley said. “Trousers and underpants seem to be ordinary Marks and Sparks cotton-polyester. Same with the shirt. The boots were Army and Navy Surplus. They could have been bought at any of their branches.”

Banks tapped his ball-pen on the edge of the desk. “Why is it that somebody doesn’t want us to know who he is or where he’s from?”

“Maybe because if we knew that we’d have a good idea who the killer was.”

“So the quicker we identify the body, the better our chances. Whoever did it was obviously counting on no-one finding it for
months, then being unable to identify it.” Banks sipped some lukewarm coffee and pulled a face. “But we’ve got a lead.” He tapped the receipt. “I want to know where this Wendy’s is located. It shouldn’t take you long. There’s a store code to go on.”

“Where do I go for that kind of information?” Hatchley asked. “Bloody hell!” Banks said. “You’re a detective. At least I hope you are. Start detecting. First, I’d suggest you call Wendy’s UK office. It’s going to be a couple of days before we get anything from Glendenning and Vic Manson, so let’s use every break we get. Did Richmond come up with anything from missing persons?”

“No, sir.”

“I suppose our corpse is still supposed to be on holiday then, if no-one’s reported him missing. And if he’s not English it could be ages before he gets into the files. Check the hotels and guest houses in the area and see if any Americans have registered there lately. If they have, try and track them down.”

Dismissed, Hatchley went to find Richmond, to whom, Banks knew, he would pass on as much of the load as possible. Still, he reasoned, the sergeant’s work was solid enough once he built up a bit of momentum, and the pressure would serve as a test of Richmond’s mettle.

Since passing his computer course with flying colours, the young detective constable looked all set for promotion. That would cause problems with Hatchley, though. There was no way, Banks reflected, that the sergeant could be expected to work with Richmond at equal rank. Things had been bad enough when Banks came from the Metropolitan force to fill the position Hatchley had set his own sights on. And Hatchley was destined to stay a sergeant; he didn’t have the extra edge needed to make inspector, as Richmond did.

Grateful that promotion was not his decision, Banks glanced at his watch and headed for the car. Neil Fellowes was waiting in Swainshead, and the poor sod had already had to arrange for one extra day off work.

II

As he drove along the dale, Banks marvelled at how familiar some of its landmarks had become: the small drumlin with its four sick elms all leaning to the right like an image in one of those Chinese water-colours that Sandra, his wife, liked so much; the quiet village of Fortford with the foundations of a Roman fort laid bare on a hillock by the green; the busy main street of Helmthorpe, Swainsdale’s largest village; and above Helmthorpe, the long limestone edge of Crow Scar gleaming in the sun.

The Kinks sang “Lola,” and Banks tapped his fingers on the steering-wheel in time with the music as he drove. Though he swore to Sandra that he still loved opera, much to her delight he hadn’t played any lately. She had approved of his recent flirtation with the blues, and now he seemed to be going through a nostalgic phase for the music he had listened to during his last days at school and first year at London Polytechnic: that idyllic, halcyon period when he hadn’t known what to do with his life, and hadn’t much cared.

It was also the year he had met Sandra, and the music brought it all back: winter evenings drinking cheap wine and making love in his draughty Notting Hill bed-sit listening to John Martyn or Nick Drake; summer boat-trips for picnics in Greenwich Park, lying in the sun below Wren’s Observatory looking down on the gleaming palace, the Thames and London spread out to the west, the Beatles, Donovan, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones on the transistor radio. . . . All gone now, or almost all. He had lost interest in pop music shortly after the Beatles split up and the glitter boys took over the scene in the early seventies, but the old songs still worked their magic on him.

He lit a cigarette and rolled down the window. It felt good to be on his own in his own car again. Much as he loved the superintendent, Banks was glad that Gristhorpe had reverted to his usual role of planner and co-ordinator. Now he could smoke and listen to music as he drove.

More important still, he liked working alone, without the feeling that someone was always looking over his shoulder. It was easy enough to deal with Hatchley and Richmond, but with a superior
heading the field investigation, it was difficult to avoid the sensation of being under constant scrutiny. That had been another reason for leaving London—too many chiefs—and for pinning his hopes on the Eastvale job after a preliminary chat with Superintendent Gristhorpe about the way he liked to run things.

Banks turned right at the Swainshead junction and parked his car in one of the spaces outside the White Rose. As he crossed the bridge, the old men stopped talking and he felt their eyes boring holes into his back as he walked down to the Greenock Guest House.

Though the door was open, he rang the bell. A young woman came rushing to answer it. She had a slender, dancer’s body, but Banks also noticed an endearing awkwardness, a lack of self-consciousness about her movements that made her seem even more attractive. She stood before him drying her hands on her pinafore and blushed.

“Sorry,” she said in a soft voice, “I was just doing some hand-washing. Please come in.”

Though her accent was clearly Yorkshire, it didn’t sound like the Swainsdale variety. Banks couldn’t immediately place it.

Her eyes were brown—the kind of brown one sees in sunlight filtered through a pint of bitter, thought Banks, amused at just how much of a Yorkshireman he must have become to yoke beer and beauty so audaciously. But her hair was blonde. She wore it tied up at the back of her neck, and it fell in stray wisps around her pale throat and ears. She wore no make-up, and her light complexion was completely smooth, her lips full and strawberry red without any lipstick. Between her lower lip and the curve of her chin was a deep indentation, giving her mouth a look somewhere between a pout and an incipient smile. She reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t think whom.

Katie, as she introduced herself, led him into a hallway that smelled of lemon air-freshener and furniture polish, as clean and fresh as a good guest house should be. Neil Fellowes was waiting for him in room five, she said, and disappeared, head bowed, into the back of the house, where Banks guessed the Greenocks made their own living-quarters.

He walked up the thick-pile burgundy carpet, found the room and knocked.

Fellowes answered immediately, as if he had been holding the doorknob on the other side. He looked in much better shape than the previous day. His few remaining strands of colourless hair were combed sideways across his bald head, and thick-lensed wire-rimmed glasses perched on the bump near the bridge of his nose.

“Come in, please er . . .”

Banks introduced himself.

“Yes, come in, Chief Inspector.”

Fellowes was obviously a man who respected rank and title.

Most people automatically called Banks “Inspector,” some preferred plain “Mister,” and others called him a lot worse.

Banks glanced out of the window at the wide strips of grass on both sides of the Swain. Beyond the cottages and pub rose the overbearing bulk of a fell. It looked like a sleeping elephant, he thought, remembering a passage from Wainwright, the fell-walking expert. Or was it whale? “Nice view,” he said, sitting down in the wicker chair by the window.

“Yes,” Fellowes agreed. “It doesn’t really matter which side of the house you stay in. Out back you can see Swainshead Fell, and over there it’s Adam’s Fell, of course.”

“Adam’s Fell?”

Fellowes adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. “Yes. After Adam and Eve. The locals do have a sense of humour—of a sort.”

“Do you visit the area often, Mr Fellowes?”

“No, not at all. I just like to research the terrain, so to speak, before I embark. By the way, Chief Inspector, I do apologize sincerely about yesterday. Finding that . . . that corpse was a great shock, and I never take liquor as a rule—or tobacco, I might add. The brandy just seemed, well, appropriate at the time. I wouldn’t have thought of it myself, but Mr Greenock was kind enough . . .” He slowed and stopped like an old gramophone winding down.

Banks, who had taken note of Fellowes’s declaration of abstemiousness and let go of the cigarette package he’d been toying with in his pocket, smiled and offered a cliché of consolation.
Inwardly, he sighed. The world was becoming too full of non-smokers for his comfort, and he hadn’t yet succeeded in swelling their ranks. Perhaps it was time to switch brands again. He was getting tired of Silk Cut, anyway. He took out his notebook and went on.

“What made you visit that spot in the first place?” he asked.

“It just looked so inviting,” Fellowes answered. “So different.”

“Had you ever been there before?”

“No.”

“Did you know of its existence?”

“No. It’s certainly not mentioned in my guide book.”

Fellowes shrugged. “Locals would, I suppose. I really can’t say.

Anyone could wander into it. It’s on the maps, of course, but it doesn’t show up as anything special.”

“But you do have to make quite a diversion from the footpath to get there.”

“Well, yes. Though I’d hardly say it’s that much of a haul.”

“Depends on what shape you’re in,” Banks said, smiling. “But you reckoned it would be worthwhile?”

“I’m interested in wild flowers, Chief Inspector. I thought I might discover something interesting.”

“When did you arrive in Swainshead?”

“Three days ago. It was only a short break. I’m saving most of my holidays for a bicycle tour of Provence in autumn.”

“I hope you have a less grim time of it there,” Banks said. “Is there anything else you can remember about the scene, about what happened?”

“It was all such a blur. First there was the orchis, then that awful smell, and . . . No. I turned away and headed back as soon as I’d . . . as soon as I refreshed myself in the beck.”

“There was nobody else in the valley?”

“Not that I was aware of.”

“You didn’t get a feeling of being followed, observed?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t find anything close to the body? Something you might have thought insignificant, picked up and forgotten about?”

“Nothing, Chief Inspector. Believe me, the feeling of revulsion was sudden and quite overwhelming.”

“Of course. Had you noticed anything else before you found the body?”

“What do you mean?”

“The victim’s rucksack was missing. We think he must have been carrying his belongings with him but we can’t find them. Did you notice any signs of something being buried, burned, destroyed?”

“I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, but no, I didn’t.”

“Any idea who the victim was?”

Fellowes opened his eyes wide. “How could I have? You must have seen for yourself how . . . how . . .”

“I know what state he was in. I was simply wondering if you’d heard anything about someone missing in the area.”

Fellowes shook his head.

Banks closed his notebook and put it back in the inside pocket of his pale blue sports jacket.

“There is one thing,” Fellowes said hesitantly.

“Yes?”

“I don’t like to cast aspersions. It’s only a very vague impression.”

“Go on.”

“And I wasn’t in full control of my faculties. It was just a feeling.”

“Policemen have feelings like that, too, Mr Fellowes. We call them hunches and they’re often very valuable. What was this feeling you had?”

Fellowes leaned forward from the edge of the bed and lowered his voice. “Well, Chief Inspector, I only really thought about it in bed last night, and it was just a kind of niggling sensation, an itch. It was in the pub, just after I arrived and, you know, told them what I’d seen. I sat at the table, quite out of breath and emotionally distraught. . . .”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing happened. It was just a feeling, as I said. I wasn’t even looking, but I got the impression that someone there wasn’t really surprised.”

“That you’d found a body?”

“Yes.”

“Was that all?”

Fellowes took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Banks noticed how small his eyes looked without the magnifying lenses. “More than that,” Fellowes went on. “I was looking away at the time, but I felt an odd sort of silence, the kind of silence in which glances are exchanged. It was very uncomfortable for a moment, though I was too preoccupied to really notice it at the time. I’ve thought about it a lot since last night, and that’s the only way I can put it, as if a kind of understanding look passed between some of the people at the table.”

“Who was there?”

“The same people as when you arrived. There was the landlord, over at the bar, then Sam Greenock, Stephen and Nicholas Collier and John Fletcher. I’d met them the previous day when I was enquiring about the best places to search for wild flowers.”