Blood At The Root Read online

  Not for Susan, Banks thought, the wild, boozy Saturday nights favored by Jim Hatchley, who followed hot on her heels looking like death warmed over: eyes bleary and bloodshot, lips dry and cracked, a shred of toilet paper stuck over a shaving cut, thinning straw hair unwashed and uncombed for a couple of days.

  After the two of them had sat down, both nursing cups of coffee, Banks explained how the boy had been killed, then he walked over to the map of Eastvale on the wall by his filing cabinet and pointed to the ginnel where the body had been discovered.

  “This is where PC Ford found him,” he began. “There are no through roads leading west nearby, so people tend to cut through the residential streets, then take the Carlaw Place ginnel over the recreation ground to King Street and the Leaview Estate. Thing is, it works both ways, so he could have been heading in either direction. We don’t know.”

  “Sir,” said Susan, “you told me on the telephone that he’d probably been killed shortly after closing time. If he’d been out drinking, isn’t it more likely that he was heading from Market Street? I mean, that’s quite a popular spot for young people on a Saturday night. There’s a fair number of pubs, and some of them have live bands or karaoke.”

  Karaoke. Banks felt himself shudder at the thought. The only other words that had a similar effect on him were “country and western music.” An oxymoron if ever there was one.

  “Good point,” he said. “So let’s concentrate our survey on the Market Street pubs and the Leaview Estate to start with. If we draw a blank there, we can extend the area.”

  “How much do we know, sir?” Sergeant Hatchley asked.

  “Precious little. I’ve already had a look at the overnight logs, and there are no reports of any major shindigs. We’ve talked to the occupants of the terrace houses on both sides of the ginnel, as well as the people across the street. The only one with anything to say was watching television, so he didn’t hear anything too clearly, but he was sure he did hear a fight or something outside during the Liverpool-Newcastle game on ‘Match of the Day.’”

  “What exactly did he hear, sir?” Susan asked.

  “Just some scuffling and grunting, then the sound of people running away. He thought more than one, but he couldn’t say how many. Or which direction. He thought it was just the usual drunken yobs, and he certainly had no intention of going outside and finding out for himself.”

  “You can hardly blame him, these days, can you?” said Sergeant Hatchley, picking gingerly at the tissue over his shaving cut. It started to bleed again. “Some of these yobs’d kill you as soon as look at you. Besides, it were a bloody good match.”

  “Anyway,” Banks went on, “you’d better check with Traffic, too. We don’t know for certain whether the attackers ran home or drove off. Maybe they got a parking ticket or got stopped for speeding.”

  “We should be so lucky,” muttered Hatchley.

  Banks pulled two sheets of paper from a folder on his desk and passed one each to Susan and Hatchley. It showed an artist’s impression of a young man, probably in his early twenties, with thin lips and a long, narrow nose. His hair was cut short and combed neatly back. Despite his youth, it seemed to be receding at the temples and looked very thin on top. There was nothing particularly distinctive about him, but Banks thought he could perceive a hint of arrogance in the expression. Of course, that was probably just artistic license.

  “The night-shift attendant at the mortuary came up with this,” he said. “A few months back, he got bored with having no one to talk to on the job, so he started sketching corpses as a way of passing the time. ‘Still lifes,’ he calls them. Obviously a man of hidden talents. Anyway, he told us this was mostly speculation, especially the nose, which had been badly broken. The cheekbones had been fractured, too, so he was guessing about how high and how prominent they might have been. But the hair’s right, he says, and the general shape of the head. It’ll have to do for now. The only things we know for certain are that the victim was a little over six feet tall, weighed eleven stone, was in fine physical shape – an athlete, perhaps – and he had blue eyes and blond hair. No birthmarks, scars, tattoos or other distinguishing features.” He tapped the folder. “We’ll try to get this on the local TV news today and in the papers tomorrow morning. For now, you can start with the house-to-house, then, after opening time, you can canvass the pubs. Uniform branch has detailed four officers to help. Our first priority is to find out who the poor bugger was, and the second is to discover who he was last seen with before he was killed. Okay?”

  They both nodded and stood up to leave.

  “And take your mobiles or personal radios and stay in touch with one another. I want the right hand to know what the left hand’s doing. All right?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Susan.

  “As for me,” said Banks with a grim smile, “Dr. Glendenning has kindly offered to come in and do the postmortem this morning, so I think one of us should pay him the courtesy of being present. Don’t you?”

  IV

  A lot of detectives complained about house-to-house inquiries, much preferring to spend their time in scummy pubs with low-life informers, getting the real feel of the Job, or so they thought. But Susan Gay had always enjoyed a good house-to-house. At the very least it was good exercise in patience.

  Of course, you got the occasional nutter, the boor, and the lecherous creep with his Hound of the Baskervilles straining at the end of its chain. Once, even, a naked child had toddled out to see what was happening and peed all over Susan’s new shoes. The mother had thought it hilarious.

  Then there were those endless hours in the rain, wind and snow, knocking at door after door, your feet aching, the damp and chill fast seeping right into the marrow of your bones, wishing you’d chosen some other career, thinking even marriage and kids would be better than this.

  And, needless to say, every now and then some clever-arse pillock would tell her she was too pretty to be a policeman, or would suggest she could put her handcuffs on him anytime she wanted, ha-ha-ha. But that was all part of the game, and she didn’t mind as much as she sometimes pretended she did to annoy Sergeant Hatchley. As far as Susan was concerned, the human race would always contain a large number of clever-arse pillocks, no matter what you thought. And the greatest percentage of them, in her experience, were likely to be men.

  But on a fine morning like this, the valley sides beyond the town’s western edge crisscrossed with limestone walls, slopes still lush green after the late-summer rains, and the purple heather coming into bloom up high, where the wild moorland began, it was as good a way as any to be earning your daily crust. And there was nothing like a house-to-house for getting to know your patch.

  The morning chill had quickly given way to warmth, and Susan guessed Eastvale might hit seventy before the day was over. Indian summer, indeed. She took her jacket off and slung it over her shoulder. At that time of year in the Dales, any good day was a bonus not to be wasted. Tomorrow might come rain, flood and famine, so seize the moment. Children played football in the streets, or rode around on bicycles and skateboards; men with their shirtsleeves rolled up flung buckets of soapy water over their cars, then waxed them to perfection; groups of teenagers stood around street corners smoking, trying to look sullen and menacing, and failing on both counts; doors and windows stood open; some people even sat on their doorsteps reading the Sunday papers and drinking tea.

  As Susan walked, she could smell meat roasting and cakes baking. She also heard snatches of just about every kind of music, from Crispian St. Peters singing “You Were on My Mind” to the opening of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which she only recognized because it was the same excerpt as the one on the CD she got free with her classical-music magazine last month.

  The Leaview Estate had been built just after the war. The houses, a mix of bungalows, semis and terraces, were solid, their style and materials in harmony with the rest of Swains-dale’s limestone and gritstone architecture. No ugly maisonettes or blocks o
f flats spoiled the skyline the way they did across town on the newer East Side Estate. And on the Lea-view Estate, many of the streets were named after flowers.

  It was almost noon, and Susan had already covered the Primroses, the Laburnums and the Roses without any luck. Now she was about to move on to the Daffodils and Buttercups. She carried a clipboard with her, carefully ticking off all the houses she visited, putting question marks and notes beside any responses she found suspicious, keeping a keen eye open for bruised knuckles and any other signs of recent pugilism. If someone wasn’t home, she would circle the house number. After every street, she used her personal radio to report back to the station. If Hatchley or any of the uniformed officers got results first, then the communications center would inform her.

  A boy came speeding around the corner of Daffodil Rise on Rollerblades, and Susan managed to jump out of the way in the nick of time. He didn’t stop. She held her hand to her chest until her heartbeat slowed to normal and thought about arresting him on a traffic offense. Then the adrenaline ebbed away and she got her breath back. She rang the bell of number two.

  The woman who answered was probably in her late fifties, Susan guessed. Nicely turned out: hair recently permed, only a touch of lipstick, face powder. Maybe just back from church. She wore a beige cardigan, despite the heat. As she spoke, she held it closed over her pale pink blouse.

  “Yes, dearie?” she said.

  Susan showed her warrant card and held out the mortuary attendant’s sketch. “We’re trying to find out who this boy is,” she said. “We think he might live locally, so we’re asking around to find out if anyone knows him.”

  The woman stared at the drawing, then tilted her head and scratched her chin.

  “Well,” she said. “It could be Jason Fox.”

  “Jason Fox?” It sounded like a pop star’s name to Susan.

  “Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Fox’s young lad.”

  Well, Susan thought, tapping her pen against her clipboard, that’s enlightening. “Do they live around here?”

  “Aye. Just over the street.” She pointed. “Number seven. But I only said it might be. It’s not a good likeness, you know, love. You ought to get a proper artist working for you. Like my lad, Laurence. Now there’s an artist for you. He sells his prints at the craft center in town, you know. I’m sure he-”

  “Yes, Mrs…?”

  “Ingram’s the name. Laurence Ingram.”

  “I’ll bear him in mind, Mrs. Ingram. Now, is there anything you can tell me about Jason Fox?”

  “The nose isn’t right. That’s the main thing. Very good with noses, is my Laurence. Did Curly Watts from ‘ Coronation Street ’ down to a tee, and that’s not an easy one. Did you know he’d done Curly Watts? Right popular with the celebrities is my Laurence. Oh, yes, very-”

  Susan took a deep breath, then went on. “Mrs. Ingram, could you tell me if you’ve seen Jason Fox around lately?”

  “Not since yesterday. But then he’s never around much. Lives in Leeds, I think.”

  “How old is he?”

  “I couldn’t say for certain. He’s left school, though. I know that.”

  “Any trouble?”

  “Jason? No. Quiet as a mouse. As I said, you hardly ever see him around. But it does look like him except for the nose. And it’s easy to get noses wrong, as my Laurence says.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Ingram,” said Susan, glancing over at number seven. “Thank you very much.” And she hurried down the path.

  “Wait a minute,” Mrs. Ingram called after her. “Aren’t you going to tell me what’s happened? After all the help I’ve given you. Has summat happened to young Jason? Has he been up to summat?”

  If Jason’s the one we’re looking for, Susan thought, then you’ll find out soon enough. As yet, he was only a “possible,” but she knew she had better inform Banks before barging in on her own. She went back to the corner of the street and spoke into her personal radio.

  V

  Banks walked quickly through the narrow streets of tourist shops behind the police station, then down King Street toward Daffodil Rise. Beyond the Leaview Estate, the town gradually dissolved into countryside, the sides of the valley narrowing and growing steeper the farther west they went.

  Near Eastvale, Swainsdale was a broad valley, with plenty of room for villages and meadows, and for the River Swain to meander this way and that. But twenty or thirty miles in, around Swainshead, it was an area of high fells, much narrower and less hospitable to human settlements. One or two places, like Swainshead itself, and the remote Skield, managed to eke out an existence in the wild landscape around Witch Fell and Adam’s Fell, but only just.

  The last row of old cottages, Gallows View, pointed west like a crooked finger into the dale. Banks’s first case in Eastvale had centered around those cottages, he remembered as he hurried on toward Daffodil Rise.

  Graham Sharp, who had been an important figure in the case, had died of a heart attack over the summer, Banks had heard. He had sold his shop a few years ago, and it had been run since by the Mahmoods, whom Banks knew slightly through his son, Brian. He had seen them down at the station, too, recently; according to Susan, someone had lobbed a brick through their window a couple of weeks ago.

  In what used to be empty fields around Gallows View, a new housing estate was under construction, scheduled for completion in a year’s time. Banks could see the half-dug foundations scattered with puddles, the piles of bricks and boards, sun glinting on idle cranes and concrete mixers. One or two streets had been partially built, but none of the houses had roofs yet.

  Number seven Daffodil Rise really stood out from the rest of the houses on the street. Not only had the owners put up a little white fence around the garden and installed a paneled, natural pine-look door, complete with a stained-glass windowpane (lunacy, Banks thought, so easy to break and enter), they also had one of the few gardens in the street that lived up to the flower motif. And because it had been a long summer, many of the flowers usually gone by the end of September were still in blossom. Bees droned around the red and yellow roses that still clung to their thorny bushes just under the front window, and the garden beds were a riot of chrysanthemums, dahlias, begonias and gladioli.

  The front door was ajar. Banks tapped softly before walking in. He had told Susan Gay over the radio that she should talk to the parents and try to confirm whether the drawing might be of their son before he arrived, but not to tell them anything until he got there.

  When Banks walked in, Mrs. Fox was just bringing a tea tray through from the kitchen into the bright, airy living room. Cut flowers in crystal vases adorned the dining table and the polished wood top of the fake-coal electric fire. Roses climbed trellises on the cream wallpaper. Over the fireplace hung a framed antique map of Yorkshire, the kind you can buy in tourist shops for a couple of quid. Along the narrowest wall stood floor-to-ceiling wooden shelving that seemed to be full of long-playing records.

  Mrs. Fox was about forty, Banks guessed. Sandra’s age. She wore a loose white top and black leggings that outlined her finely tapered legs, with well-toned calves and shapely thighs – the kind you only got at that age from regular exercise. She had a narrow face, and her features seemed cramped just a little too close together. Her hair was simply parted in the middle and hung down as far as her shoulders on each side, curling under just a little at the bottom. The roots were only a slightly darker shade of blond.

  Mr. Fox stood up to shake hands with Banks. Bald except for a couple of black chevrons above his ears, with a thin, bony face, he wore black-rimmed glasses, jeans and a green sweatshirt. He was exceptionally skinny, which made him appear tall, and he looked as if he had the kind of metabolism that allowed him to eat as much as he wanted without putting on a pound. Banks wasn’t quite as skinny himself, but he never seemed to put on much weight either, despite the ale and the junk food.

  Tea poured, Mrs. Fox sat down on the sofa with her husband and crossed her long legs. Husband and wi
fe left enough space for another person to sit between them, but Banks took a chair from the dining table, turned it around and sat, resting his arms on the back.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Fox were just telling me,” Susan Gay said, getting her notebook out, “that Jason looks like the lad in the drawing, and he didn’t sleep here last night.”

  “She won’t tell us anything.” Mrs. Fox appealed to Banks with her small, glittering eyes. “Is our Jason in any trouble?”

  “Has he ever been in trouble before?” Banks asked.

  She shook her head. “Never. He’s a good boy. He never caused us any problems, has he, Steven? That’s why I can’t understand you coming here. We’ve never had the police here before.”

  “Weren’t you worried when Jason didn’t sleep here last night?”

  Mrs. Fox looked surprised. “No. Why should I be?”

  “Weren’t you expecting him?”

  “Look, what’s happened? What’s going on?”

  “Jason lives in Leeds, Chief Inspector,” Steven Fox cut in. “He just uses our house when it suits him, a bit like a hotel.”

  “Oh, come on, Steven,” his wife said. “You know that’s not fair. Jason’s grown up. He’s got his own life to live. But he’s still our son.”

  “When it suits him.”

  “What does he do in Leeds?” Banks cut in.

  “He’s got a good job,” said Steven Fox. “And there’s not many as can say that these days. An office job at a factory out in Stourton.”

  “I assume he’s also got a flat or a house in Leeds, too?”

  “Yes. A flat.”

  “Can you give DC Gay the address, please? And the name and address of the factory?”

  “Of course.” Steven Fox gave Susan the information.