In a Dry Season Read online

  More Acclaim for In a Dry Season

  “A stylish and gently reflective tale.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “His best by far … Peter Robinson is one of Canada’s least appreciated crime writers. His series … featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is consistently fine, and Robinson continues to stretch his talents, refusing to settle into the routine of creating charming British formula mysteries for an avid audience.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “The successful combination of the personal and the professional makes In a Dry Season another Robinson winner, well-written, deftly plotted and satisfyingly complete.”

  —The London Free Press

  “Peter Robinson is an expert plotter with an eye for telling detail … The characters have complexity and the issues range broad and deep.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Those who have not discovered Peter Robinson’s literary procedurals should not miss In a Dry Season. A seamless weaving of the past and present, with each illuminating the other.”

  —San Antonio Express-News

  Acclaim for Dead Right

  “This novel is Robinson at his best. A well plotted whodunnit, with solid characters and writings.”

  —The Gazette (Montreal)

  “Dead-on again … There is a sense of an older style of mystery writing at work within his series, a throwback to Josephine Tey and Ngaio Marsh … With nine Inspector Banks novels under his belt, Robinson has delivered enough installments now to make for a satisfying long read, beginning with Gallow’s View and culminating with Dead Right.”

  — Edmonton Journal

  “A very satisfying read … Like the late, great Raymond Chandler, Peter Robinson writes good mysteries laced with social comment.”

  —Calgary Herald

  Acclaim for Innocent Graves

  “Robinson adds another level of nuance to his already fully dimensioned fiction and takes a quantum leap as a writer.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Robinson’s work has an energy and imagination that makes it as fresh as it was in the beginning. In fact, this novel is one of the top three so far. This one is good right to the end.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “The characters have complexity and the issues range broad and deep, raising interesting moral questions about bigotry, class privilege and the terrible crime of being different.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  Acclaim for Wednesday’s Child

  “His best work yet ... You really won’t put this one down until the final paragraph.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “He is steadily ascending toward the pinnacle of crime fiction.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “With Wednesday’s Child, Peter Robinson shows himself to be one of the very best crime novelists, and much more in control of his material and disturbing in his vision than certain much lauded composers of ‘psychological’ crime fiction ... This is a superb book, and disturbing.”

  —Books in Canada

  PENGUIN CANADA

  IN A DRY SEASON

  PETER ROBINSON grew up in Leeds, Yorkshire. He emigrated to Canada in 1974 and attended York University and the University of Windsor, where he was later writer-in-residence. His many awards include five Arthur Ellis Awards, the Edgar Award for best short story, The Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger in the Library Award, the Torgi talking book of the year, France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Sweden’s Martin Beck Award. His books have been published internationally to great acclaim and translated into fifteen languages. Peter Robinson lives in Toronto.

  Other Inspector Banks mysteries

  Gallows View

  A Dedicated Man

  A Necessary End

  The Hanging Valley

  Past Reason Hated

  Wednesday’s Child

  Final Account

  Innocent Graves

  Dead Right

  Cold Is the Grave

  Aftermath

  The Summer That Never Was

  Playing with Fire

  Strange Affair

  Piece of My Heart

  Inspector Banks collections

  Meet Inspector Banks

  (includes Gallows View, A Dedicated Man and A Necessary End)

  Inspector Banks Investigates

  (includes The Hanging Valley, Past Reason Hated and Wednesday’s Child)

  The Return of Inspector Banks

  (includes Innocent Graves, Final Account and Dead Right)

  Also by Peter Robinson

  Caedmon’s Song

  No Cure for Love

  Not Safe After Dark

  PETER ROBINSON

  AN INSPECTOR BANKS MYSTERY

  IN A DRY SEASON

  PENGUIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1999

  Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2000

  Published in this edition, 2006

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

  Copyright © Peter Robinson, 1999

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in Canada.

  * * *

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Robinson, Peter, 1950–

  In a dry season : an Inspector Banks mystery / Peter Robinson.

  First published: Toronto : Viking, 1999.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305222-7

  ISBN-10: 0-14-305222-5

  I. Title.

  PS8585.O35176I48 2006 C813’.54 C2006-902178-3

  * * *

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.p
enguin.ca

  Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see

  www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-399-6858, ext. 477 or 474

  For Dad and Averil

  Elaine and Mick

  and Adam and Nicola

  “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

  L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

  Prologue: August 1967

  It was the Summer of Love and I had just buried my husband when I first went back to see the reservoir that had flooded my childhood village.

  I made the journey only a few months after Ronald and I had returned from one of our frequent long spells abroad. Spells that had suited me well for many years. Ronald, too, had suited me well. He was a decent man and a good husband, quite willing to accept that our marriage was one of convenience. I believe he saw me as an asset in his diplomatic career, though it was certainly neither my dazzling beauty nor my sparkling wit that snared him. I was, however, presentable and intelligent, in addition to being an exceptionally good dancer.

  Whatever the reason, I became adept at playing the minor diplomat’s wife. It seemed a small price to pay. In a way, I was Ronald’s passport to career success and promotion, and—though I never told him this—he was my passport to flight and escape. I married him because I knew we would spend our lives far away from England, and I wanted to be as far away from England as possible. Now, after more than ten years abroad, it doesn’t seem to matter very much. I shall be quite content to live out the rest of my days in the Belsize Park flat. Ronald, always a shrewd investor, also left me a tidy sum of money. Enough, at least, to live on for some years and to buy myself a new Triumph sports car. A red one. With a radio.

  And so, singing along with “All You Need is Love,” “Itchycoo Park” and “See Emily Play,” listening to the occasional news bulletins about Joe Orton’s murder and the closing-down of the offshore pirate radio stations, I headed back to Hobb’s End for the first time in more than twenty years. For some reason I have never been able to explain, I enjoyed the raw, naïve and whimsical new music the young people were listening to, even though I was in my early forties. It made me long to be young again: young without the complications of my own youth; young without the war; young without the heartbreak; young without the terror and the blood.

  I don’t think I saw another car after I left the main road outside Skipton. It was one of those perfect summer days when the air smells sweet with the perfume of cut grass and wild flowers. I fancied I could even smell the warm exhalations of the drystone walls. Berries shone like polished garnets on the rowan trees. Tewits soared and tumbled over the meadows and sheep bleated their pitiful calls from the far dalesides. The colours were all so vibrant, the green greener than ever, the blue of the cloudless sky piercingly bright.

  Not far beyond Grassington I lost my way. I stopped and asked two men carrying out repairs to a drystone wall. It was a long time since I had heard the characteristic broad speech of the Dales and at first it sounded foreign to me. Finally I understood, thanked them and left them scratching their heads over the strange middle-aged lady with the sunglasses, the pop music and the flashy red sports car.

  The old lane stopped at the edge of the woods, so I had to get out and walk the rest of the way along a crooked dirt path. Clouds of gnats whined above my head, wrens flitted through the undergrowth and blue tits hopped from branch to branch.

  At last I broke out of the woods and stood at the edge of the reservoir. My heart pulsed into my throat and I had to lean against one of the trees. The bark felt rough on my palms. For a moment, skin flushed and fingers tingling, I thought I was going to faint. But it passed.

  There had been trees long ago, of course, but not as many, and most of them had been to the north of the village, in Rowan Woods. When I had lived there, Hobb’s End had been a village in a valley. Now I gazed upon a lake surrounded by forest.

  The water’s surface, utterly still, reflected the trees and the occasional shadow of a gull or a swallow flying over. To my right, I could see the small dam where the old river narrowed as it flowed into Harksmere Reservoir. Confused, unsure what I was feeling, I sat on the bank and stared over the scene.

  I was sitting where the old railway branch line used to run, the train I had travelled on so often during my childhood. A single track that ran to and from Harrogate, the railway had provided our only real access to the larger world beyond Hobb’s End during the war. Dr Beeching had done away with it three or four years ago, of course, and already the lines were overgrown with weeds. The council had planted weeping willows on the spot where the old station had stood, where many a time I had bought tickets from Mrs Shipley and waited on the platform with rising excitement to hear the distant chugging and whistling of the old steam engine.

  As I sat there remembering, time went by. I had started out late and the journey from London was a long one. Soon, darkness infused the woods around me, filling the spaces between the branches and the silences between the bird-calls. A whisper of a breeze sprang up. The water caught the fading light in such a way that its slightly ruffled surface looked as if it had been sprinkled with salmon-pink powder. Slowly, even this darkened, until only a deep inky blue remained.

  Then a full moon rose, scattering its bone-white light, in which I fancied I could see clear through the water to the village that used to be there, like an image preserved in water-glass. There it was, spread out below me, darkly glittering and shimmering under the barely perceptible rippling of the surface.

  As I stared, I began to feel that I could reach out and touch it. It was like the world beyond the mirror in Cocteau’s Orpheus. When you reach out and touch the glass, it turns to water and you can plunge through it into the Underworld.

  What I saw there was a vision of the village as it had been when I lived there, smoke curling from chimneys over the slate and flagstone roofs, the dark mill on the hillock at the west end, the squat church tower, the High Street curving beside the narrow river. The longer I looked, the more I imagined I could see the people going about their daily business: shopping, making deliveries, gossiping. In my vision, I could even see our little shop, where I met her for the first time that blustery spring day in 1941. The day it all began.

  One

  Adam Kelly loved to play in the derelict houses, loved the musty smell of the old rooms, the way they creaked and groaned as he moved around inside them, the way the sunlight shone through the laths, casting striped shadows on the walls. He loved to leap the gaps between the broken stairs, heart in his mouth, and hop from rafter to rafter, kicking up plaster dust and watching the motes dance in the filtered light.

  This afternoon, Adam had a whole village to play in.

  He stood at the rim of the shallow valley, staring at the ruins below and anticipating the adventure to come. This was the day he had been waiting for. Maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Anything could happen down there. The future of the universe depended on Adam today; the village was a test, one of the things he had to conquer before advancing to the Seventh Level.

  The only other people in sight stood at the far end, near the old flax mill: a man in jeans and a red T-shirt and a woman all dressed in white. They were pretending to be tourists, pointing their video camera here and there, but Adam suspected they might be after the same thing he was. He had played the game often enough on his computer to know that deception was everywhere and things were never what they seemed. Heaven help us, he thought, if they got to it first.

  He half slid and half ran down the dirt slope, skidding to a halt when he reached the red, baked earth at the bottom. There were still patches of mud around; all that water, he supposed, wouldn’t just evaporate over a few weeks.

  Adam paused and listened. Even the birds were silent. The sun beat down and made him sweat behind his ears, at the back of his neck and in the crack of his bum. His glasses kept slipping down his nose. The dark, ruined cottages wavered in the heat like a
wall behind a workman’s brazier.

  Anything could happen now. The Talisman was here somewhere, and it was Adam’s job to find it. But where to begin? He didn’t even know what it looked like, only that he would know it when he found it and that there must be clues somewhere.

  He crossed the old stone bridge and walked into one of the half-demolished cottages, aware of the moist, cool darkness gathering around him like a cloak. It smelled like a bad toilet, or as if some gigantic alien creature had lain down to die in a hot, fetid swamp.

  Sunlight slanted in through the space where the roof had been, lighting the far wall. The dark stones looked slick and greasy as an oil spill. In places, the heavy stone flags that formed the floor had shifted and cracked, and thick gobbets of mud oozed up between them. Some of the slabs wobbled when Adam stood on them. He felt poised over quicksand ready to suck him down to the earth’s core if he made one wrong move.

  There was nothing in this house. Time to move on. Outside, he could see no one. The two tourists seemed to have left now, unless they were hiding, lying in wait for him behind the ruined mill.

  Adam noticed an outbuilding near the bridge, the kind of place that had perhaps once been used to store coal or keep food cold. He had heard about the old days before electric fires and fridges. It might even have been a toilet. Hard to believe, he knew, but once people had to go outside to the toilet, even in winter.

  Whatever it had been, The Destructors had left it largely alone. About seven feet high, with a slanting flagstone roof still intact, it seemed to beckon him to come and vanquish it. Here, at least, was a structure he could mount to get a clear view. If the pretend-tourists were hiding nearby, he would see them from up there.

  Adam walked around the outbuilding and was pleased to see that on one side a number of stones stuck out farther than others, like steps. Carefully, he rested his weight on the first one. It was slippery, but it held fast. He started to climb. Every step seemed solid enough, and soon he was at the top.