Cold is the Grave Read online

  PETER

  ROBINSON

  Cold is the Grave

  AN INSPECTOR BANKS MYSTERY

  PAN BOOKS

  For Sheila

  The wind it doth blow hard

  And the cold rain down doth rain

  And cold, cold is the grave

  Wherein my love is lain

  Traditional folk ballad

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Epilogue

  AFTERMATH

  Prologue

  1

  Innocent Graves

  1

  ‘Mummy! Mummy! Come here.’

  Rosalind carried on stuffing the wild mushroom, olive oil, garlic and parsley mixture between the skin and the flesh of the chicken, the way she had learned in her recent course on the art of French cuisine. ‘Mummy can’t come right now,’ she shouted back. ‘She’s busy.’

  ‘But, Mummy! You’ve got to come. It’s our lass.’

  Where on earth did he learn such common language? Rosalind wondered. Every term they forked out a fortune in fees to send him to the best school Yorkshire had to offer, and still he ended up sounding like some vulgar tyke. Perhaps if they lived down south again, the situation would improve. ‘Benjamin,’ she called back, ‘I told you. Mummy’s busy. Daddy has an important dinner tonight and Mummy has to prepare.’

  Rosalind didn’t mind cooking – in fact, she had taken several courses and quite enjoyed them – but just for a moment, as she spoke, she wished she had been able to say that ‘cook’ was preparing the meal and that she was busy deciding what to wear. But they had no cook, only a cleaning lady who came in once a week. It wasn’t that they couldn’t afford it, but simply that her husband drew the line at such extravagance. Honestly, Rosalind sometimes thought, anyone would imagine he was a born Yorkshireman himself instead of just living here.

  ‘But it is her!’ Benjamin persisted. ‘It’s our lass. She’s got no clothes on.’

  Rosalind frowned and put aside her knife. What on earth could he be talking about? Benjamin was only eight, and she knew from experience that he had a very active imagination. She even worried that it might hold him back in life. Over-imaginative types, she had found, tend towards idleness and daydreaming; they don’t get on with more profitable activities.

  ‘Mummy, hurry up!’

  Rosalind felt just the slightest tingle of apprehension, as if something were about to change for ever in her universe. Shaking off the feeling, she wiped her hands of the oily stuffing, took a quick sip of gin and tonic, then walked towards the study where Benjamin had been playing on the computer. As she did so, she heard the front door open and her husband call out that he was home. Early. She frowned. Was he checking up on her?

  Ignoring him for the moment, she went to see what on earth Benjamin was talking about.

  ‘Look,’ the boy said as she walked into the room. ‘It is our lass.’ He pointed at the computer screen.

  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ Rosalind said. ‘I’ve told you before. It’s common.’

  Then she looked.

  At first, she was simply shocked to see the screen filled with the image of a naked woman. How had Benjamin stumbled onto such a site? He wasn’t even old enough to understand what he had found.

  Then, as she leaned over his shoulder and peered more closely at the screen, she gasped. He was right. She was looking at a picture of her daughter, Emily, naked as the day she was born, but with considerably more curves, a tattoo and a wispy patch of blonde pubic hair between her legs. That it was her Emily, there was no mistake; the teardrop-shaped birthmark on the inside of her left thigh proved it.

  Rosalind ran her hand through her hair. What was this all about? What was happening? She glanced briefly at the URL on top of the screen. She had a photographic memory, so she knew she wouldn’t forget it.

  ‘See,’ said Benjamin. ‘It is our lass, isn’t it. What’s she doing without any clothes on, Mummy?’

  Then Rosalind panicked. My God, he mustn’t see this. Emily’s father. He mustn’t be allowed to see it. It would destroy him. Quickly, she reached towards the mouse, but before her fingers could click on it, a deep voice behind her told her it was too late.

  ‘What on earth’s going on?’ he asked mildly, putting a fatherly hand on his son’s shoulder.

  Then, after the briefest of silences, Rosalind heard the sharp intake of breath and knew that he had the answer.

  His hand tightened and Benjamin flinched. ‘Daddy, you’re hurting me.’

  But Chief Constable Jeremiah Riddle was oblivious to his son’s pain. ‘My God!’ he gasped, pointing at the screen. ‘Is that who I think it is?’

  Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks paused over his holdall, wondering whether he should take the leather jacket or the windcheater. There wasn’t room for both. He wasn’t sure how cold it would be. Probably no different from Yorkshire, he guessed. At most, perhaps a couple of degrees warmer. Still, you never could tell with November. In the end, he decided he could take both. He folded the windcheater and put it on top of the shirts he had already packed, then he pressed down hard on the contents before dragging the reluctant zip shut. It seemed a lot for just one weekend away from home, but it all fitted into one not-too-heavy bag. He would wear his leather jacket on the journey.

  All he had to do now was choose a book and a few tapes. He probably wouldn’t need them, but he didn’t like to travel anywhere without something to read and something to listen to in case of delays or emergencies.

  It was a lesson he had learned the hard way, having once spent four hours in the casualty department of a large London hospital on a Saturday night waiting to have six stitches sewn beside his right eye. All that time, he had held the gauze pad to staunch the bleeding and watched the endless supply of drug overdoses, attempted suicides, heart-attack victims and road accidents going in before him. That their wounds were far more serious and merited more urgent treatment than his minor cut, Banks never had a moment’s doubt, but he wished to hell there had been something to read in the dingy waiting area other than a copy of the previous day’s Daily Mirror. The person who had read it before him had even filled in the crossword. In ink.

  But tomorrow he was going to Paris with his daughter, Tracy, for a long weekend of art galleries, museums and walks, of sumptuous dinners in small, Left Bank restaurants and idle beers at zinc-topped counters in Montmartre, looking out on the crowds passing by. They were going to take the Eurostar, which Banks had managed to book practically for free through a special newspaper offer. After all, it was November, and most people preferred Lanzarote to a wet weekend in Paris. He probably wouldn’t need much in the way of music or books, except when he was alone in his room before bed, but he decided to err on the side of caution.

  Banks carried the holdall downstairs and dug out a couple of extra batteries from the sideboard drawer. He slipped them in the side pouch, along with the Walkman itself, then picked out tapes he had made of his Cassandra Wilson, Dawn Upshaw and Lucinda Williams CDs. Three more different women’s voices and styles you probably couldn’t find anywhere on earth, but he liked them all, and between them they covered a wide range of moods. He cast an eye over the low bookshelf and picked out Simenon’s Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets. He didn’t usually read crime novels, but the title had caught his eye and someone had once told him that he had a lot in common with Maigret. Besides, he assumed that it was set in Par
is.

  When Banks had finished packing, he poured himself a couple of fingers of Laphroaig and put on Bill Evans’s Waltz for Debby CD. Then he sat in his armchair beside the shaded reading lamp, balanced the whisky on the arm and put his feet up as ‘My Foolish Heart’ made its hesitant progress. A few lumps of peat burnt in the fireplace, its smell harmonizing with the smoky bite of the Islay malt on his tongue.

  But too much smoke seemed to be drifting from the fireplace into the room. Banks wondered if he needed a chimney sweep, as a fire probably hadn’t been lit in that grate for a long time. He had no idea how to find a sweep, nor did he even know if such an exotic creature still existed. He remembered being fascinated as a child when the chimney sweep came, and his mother covered everything in the room with old sheets. Banks was allowed to watch the strange, soot-faced man fit the extensions on his long thick brush as he pushed it up the tall chimney, but he had to leave the room before the real work began. Later, when he read about the Victorian practice of sending young boys naked up the chimneys, he always wondered about that chimney sweep, if he had ever done anything like that. In the end, he realized the man couldn’t have been old enough to have been alive so long ago, no matter how ancient he had seemed to the awestruck young boy.

  He decided that the chimney was fine, and it was probably just the wind blowing some smoke back down. He could hear it howling around the thick walls, rattling the loose window in the spare bedroom upstairs, spattering the panes with rain. Since there had been so much rain lately, Banks could also hear the rushing of Gratly Falls outside his cottage. They were nothing grand, only a series of shallow terraces, none more than four or five feet high, that ran diagonally through the village where the beck ran down the daleside to join the River Swain in Helmthorpe. But the music changed constantly and proved a great delight to Banks, especially when he was lying in bed having trouble getting to sleep.

  Glad he didn’t have to go out again that evening, Banks sat and sipped his single malt, listening to the familiar lyrical opening of ‘Waltz for Debby’. His mind drifted to the problem that had been looming larger and larger ever since his last case, which had been a one-off job designed to make him fail and look like a fool.

  He hadn’t failed, and consequently Chief Constable Riddle, who had hated Banks from the start, was now even more pissed off at him than ever. Banks found himself back in the career doldrums, chained to his desk and with no prospect of action in the foreseeable future. It was getting to be a bore.

  And he could see only one way out.

  Loath as Banks was to leave Yorkshire, especially after so recently buying the cottage, he was fast coming to admit that his days here seemed numbered. Last week, after thinking long and hard, he had put in his application to the National Crime Squad, which had been designed to target organized crime. As a DCI, Banks would hardly be involved in undercover work, but he would be in a position to run operations and enjoy the adrenaline high when a big catch finally landed. The job would also involve travel, tracking British criminals who operated from headquarters in Holland, the Dordogne and Spain.

  Banks knew he didn’t have a good enough educational background for the job, lacking a degree, but he did have the experience, and he thought that might still count for something, despite Riddle. He knew he could do the ‘hard sums’, the language, number and management tests necessary for the job, and he thought he could count on excellent references from everyone else he had worked with in Yorkshire, including his immediate commanding officer, Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe, and the Director of Human Resources, Millicent Cummings. He only hoped that the negative report he was bound to get from Riddle would seem suspicious by its difference.

  There was another reason for the change, too. Banks had thought a lot about his estranged wife, Sandra, over the past couple of months, and he had come to believe that their separation might be only temporary. A major change in his circumstances, such as a posting to the NCS, would certainly be of benefit. It would mean moving somewhere else, maybe back to London, and Sandra loved London. He felt there was a real chance to put things right now, put the silliness of the past year behind them. Banks had had his brief romance with Annie Cabbot, and Sandra hers with Sean. That Sandra was still living with Sean didn’t weigh unduly on his mind. People often drifted along in relationships, lacking the courage or the initiative to go it alone. He was certain that she would come to see things differently when he presented her with his plan for the future.

  When the telephone rang at nine o’clock, startling him out of Bill Evans’s deft keyboard meanderings, he thought at first that it might be Tracy. He hoped she hadn’t changed her mind about the weekend; he needed to talk to her about the future, to enlist her help in getting Sandra back.

  It wasn’t Tracy. It was Chief Constable Jeremiah ‘Jimmy’ Riddle, the very reason Banks had gone so far as to contemplate selling his cottage and leaving the county.

  ‘Banks?’

  Banks gritted his teeth. ‘Sir?’

  Riddle paused. ‘I’d like to ask you a favour.’

  Banks’s jaw dropped. ‘A favour?’

  ‘Yes. Do you think . . . I mean, would you mind dropping by the house? It’s very important. I wouldn’t ask otherwise. Not on such a wretched night as this.’

  Banks’s mind reeled. Riddle had never spoken to him in such a polite manner before, with such a fragile edge to his voice. What on earth was going on? Another trick?

  ‘It’s late, sir,’ Banks said. ‘I’m tired, and I’m supposed to be—’

  ‘Look, I’m asking you for a favour, man. My wife and I have had to cancel a very important dinner party at the last minute because of this. Can’t you just for once put aside your bloody-mindedness and oblige me?’

  That sounded more like the Jimmy Riddle of old. Banks was on the verge of telling him to fuck off when the CC’s tone changed once again and threw him off balance. ‘Please, Banks,’ Riddle said. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about. Something urgent. Don’t worry. This isn’t a trick. I’m not out to put one over on you. I give you my word. I honestly need your help.’

  Surely even Riddle wouldn’t stoop to pulling a stunt like this solely to humiliate him. Now Banks was curious, and he knew he would go. If he were the kind of man who could ignore a call so full of mystery, he had no business being a copper in the first place. He didn’t want to go out into the foul night, didn’t want to leave his Laphroaig, Bill Evans and the crackling peat fire, but he knew he had to. He put his glass aside, glad that he had drunk only the one small whisky all day.

  ‘All right,’ he said, reaching for the pencil and paper beside the telephone. ‘But you’d better tell me where you live and give me directions. I don’t believe I’ve ever been invited to your home before.’

  Riddle lived about halfway between Eastvale and Northallerton, which meant about an hour’s drive for Banks in good weather, but well over that tonight. The rain was coming down in buckets; his windscreen wipers worked overtime the whole way, and there were times when he could hardly see more than a few yards ahead. It was only two days before Bonfire Night, and the piles of wood and discarded furniture were getting soaked on the village greens.

  The Riddle house was a listed building, called the Old Mill because it had been built originally as a mill by Cistercian monks from the nearby abbey. Made of limestone, with a flagstone roof, it stood beside the mill-race, which came rushing down through the garden. The old stone barn on the other side of the house had been converted into a garage.

  As Banks drove up the short gravel drive and pulled up, he noticed that there were lights showing in two of the downstairs windows, while the rest of the place was in darkness. Almost before he could knock, the door jerked open and he found himself ushered inside a dim hallway, where Riddle took his coat without ceremony and led him through to a living room bigger than Banks’s entire cottage. It was all exposed beams and whitewashed walls decked with polished hunting horns and the inevitable horse
brasses. A gilt-framed mirror hung above the Adam fireplace, where a fire roared, and a baby grand piano stood by the mullioned bay window.

  It was very much the kind of house Banks would associate with someone pulling in a hundred grand a year or more, but for all its rusticity, and for all the heat the fire threw out, it was a curiously cold, bleak and impersonal kind of room. There were no magazines or newspapers scattered on the low glass-topped table, and no messy piles of sheet music by the piano; the woodwork gleamed as if it had been waxed just moments ago, and everything was neat, clean and orderly. Which, come to think of it, was exactly what Banks would have expected from Riddle. This effect was heightened by the silence broken only by the occasional howling of the wind outside and the rain spattering against the windows.

  A woman walked into the room.

  ‘My wife, Rosalind,’ said Riddle.

  Banks shook Rosalind’s hand. It was soft, but her grip was firm. If this was shaping up to be a night of surprises, Rosalind Riddle was the second.

  Banks had never met the chief constable’s wife before – all he knew about her was that she worked with a firm of Eastvale solicitors specializing in property conveyancing – and if he had ever given a passing thought to her, he might have imagined a stout, sturdy and rather characterless figure. Why, he didn’t know, but that was the image that came to mind.

  The woman who stood before him, however, was elegant and tall, with a model’s slim figure and long shapely legs. She was casually dressed in a grey skirt and a white silk blouse, and the two buttons open at the top revealed a V of skin as pale as her complexion. She had short blonde hair – the expensive, shaggy kind of short, and the highlighted sort of blonde – a high forehead, prominent cheekbones and dark blue eyes. Her lips were fuller than one would expect in the kind of face she had, and the lipstick made them seem even more so, giving the impression of a pout.

  Her expression revealed nothing, but Banks could tell from her brusque body language that she was distraught. She set her drink on the table and sat on the velvet-upholstered sofa, crossing her legs and leaning forward, one hand clasping the other in her lap. She reminded Banks of the kind of elegant, remote blondes that Alfred Hitchcock had cast in so many of his films.