In a Dry Season (6 page)

What really bothered him was his realization that he didn't really know his son very well any more. Brian had grown up over the past few years away from home, and Banks hadn't seen much of him. Truth be told, he had spent far more time and energy on Tracy. He had also had his own preoccupations and problems, both at work and at home. Maybe they were on the wane, but they certainly hadn't gone away yet.

If
DS
Cabbot felt uncomfortable with Banks's brooding
silence, she didn't show it. He fished out his cigarettes. Still not bad; he had smoked only five so far that day, despite his row with Brian and Jimmy Riddle's phone call. Cutting out the ones he usually had in the car was a good idea. “Do you mind?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Sure?”

“If you're asking whether it'll make me suffer, it will, but I usually manage to control my cravings.”

“Reformed?”

“A year.”

“Sorry.”

“You needn't be. I'm not.”

Banks lit up. “I'm thinking of stopping soon, myself.

I've cut down.”

“Best of luck.”
DS
Cabbot raised her glass, took a sip of beer and smacked her lips. “Ah, that's good. Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“No.”

She leaned forward and touched the hair at his right temple. “What's that?”

“What? The scar?”

“No. The blue bit. I didn't think
DCI
s went in for dye jobs.”

Banks felt himself blush. He touched the spot she had indicated. “It must be paint. I was painting my living-room when Jimmy Riddle phoned. I thought I'd washed it all off.”

She smiled. “Never mind. Looks quite nice, actually.” “Maybe I should get an earring to go with it?” “Better not go
too
far.”

Banks gestured out of the window. “Get much trouble?” he asked.

“The kids? Nah, not a lot. Bit of glue-sniffing, some vandalism. Mostly they're bored. It's just adolescent high spirits.”

Banks nodded. At least Brian wasn't bored and shiftless. He had a direction he passionately wanted to head in. Whether it was the right one or not was another matter. Banks tried to concentrate on the job at hand. “I called my sergeant on the way here,” he said. “He'll organize a
SOCO
team to dig out the bones tomorrow morning. A bloke called John Webb will be in charge. He's studied archaeology. Goes on digs for his holidays, so he ought to know what he's doing. I've also phoned our odontologist, Geoff Turner, and asked him to have a look at the teeth as soon as it can be arranged. You can phone around the universities in the morning, see if you can come up with a friendly forensic anthropologist. These people are pretty keen, as a rule, so I don't think that'll be a problem. In the meantime,” he said as his smoke curled and twisted out of the window, “tell me all about Thornfield Reservoir.”

DS
Cabbot leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs at the ankles, resting the beer glass against her flat stomach. She had swapped her red wellies for a pair of white sandals, and her jeans rode up to reveal tapered ankles, bare except for a thin gold chain around the left one. Banks had never seen anyone manage to look quite so comfortable in a hard pub chair. He wondered again what she could possibly have done to end up in such a Godforsaken outpost as Harkside. Was she another of Jimmy Riddle's pariahs?

“It's the most recent of the three reservoirs built along the River Rowan,” she began. “Linwood and Harksmere were both created in the late nineteenth century to supply
Leeds with extra water. It's piped from the reservoirs to the big waterworks just outside the city, then it's purified and pumped into people's homes.”

“But Harksmere and Thornfield are in
North
Yorkshire, not West Yorkshire. West Riding, I suppose it was back then. Even so, why should they be supplying water to Leeds?”

“I don't know how it came about, but some sort of deal was struck between North Yorkshire and the Leeds City Council for the land use. That's why we're not part of the park.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rowandale. Nidderdale, too. We're not part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, though we should be if you go by geography and natural beauty. It's because of the water. Nobody wanted to have to deal with National Parks Commission's rules and regulations, so it was easier just to exclude us.”

Like Eastvale, Banks thought. Because it was just beyond the park's border, the severe building restrictions that operated
inside
the Yorkshire Dales National Park didn't apply. Consequently, you ended up with monstrosities like the East Side Estate, with its ugly tower blocks and maisonettes, and the new council estate just completed down by Gallows View: “Gibbet Acres,” as everyone was calling it at the station.

Their meals arrived. Banks stubbed out his cigarette. “What about Thornfield?” he asked after he had swallowed his first bite. The pie was good, tender beef and just enough Stilton to complement it. “How long has it been there? What happened to the village?”

“Thornfield Reservoir was created in the early fifties,
around the time the national parks system was established, but the village had already been empty a few years by then. Since the end of the war, I think. Used to have a population of around three or four hundred. It wasn't called Thornfield; it was called Hobb's End.”

“Why?”

“Beats me. There's no Hobb in its history, as far as anyone knows, and it wasn't the end of anything—except maybe civilization as we know it.”

“How long was the village there?”

“No idea. Since medieval times, probably. Most of them have been.”

“Why was it empty? What drove people away?” “Nothing drove them away. It just died. Places do, like people. Did you notice that big building at the far west end?”

“Yes.”

“That was the flax mill. It was the village's
raison d'être
in the nineteenth century. The mill owner, Lord Clifford, also owned the land and the cottages. Very feudal.”

“You seem to be an expert, but you don't sound as if you come from these parts.”

“I don't. I read up on the area when I came here. It's got quite an interesting history. Anyway, the flax mill started to lose business—too much competition from bigger operations and from abroad—then old Lord Clifford died and his son wanted nothing to do with the place. This was just after the Second World War. Tourism wasn't such big business in the Dales back then, and you didn't get absentees buying up all the cottages for holiday rentals. When someone moved out, if nobody else wanted to move in, the cottage was usually left empty and soon
fell to rack and ruin. People moved away to the cities or to the other dales. Finally, the new Lord Clifford sold the land to Leeds Corporation Waterworks. They rehoused the remaining tenants, and that was that. Over the next few years, the engineers moved in and prepared the site, then they created the reservoir.”

“Why that site in particular? There must be plenty of places to build reservoirs.”

“Not really. It's partly because the other two were nearby and it was easier for the engineers to add one to the string. That way they could control the levels better. But mostly I imagine it's to do with water tables and bedrock and such. There's a lot of limestone in the Dales, and apparently you can't build reservoirs on that sort of limestone. It's permeable. The Rowan valley bottom's made of something else, something hard. It's all to do with faults and extrusions. I'm afraid I've forgotten most of my school geology.”

“Me, too. When did you say all this happened?” “Between the end of the Second World War and the early fifties. I can check the exact dates back at the station.”

“Please.” Banks paused and tasted some beer. “So our body, if indeed there is one, and if it's human, has to have been down there since before the early fifties?”

“Unless someone put it there this summer.”

“I'm no expert, but from what I've seen so far, it looks older than that.”

“It could have been moved from somewhere else. Maybe when the reservoir dried up someone found a better hiding place for a body they already had.”

“I suppose it's possible.”

“Whatever happened, I doubt that whoever buried it
there would have put on a frogman's outfit and swum down.”

“Whoever
buried
it?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I'd say it was buried, wouldn't you?” Banks finished his pie and pushed the rest of the chips aside. “Go on.”

“The stone slabs. Maybe the body
could
have got covered by two or three feet of earth without much help. Maybe. I mean, we don't know how much things shifted and silted down there over the last forty years or more. We also don't know yet whether the victim was wearing concrete wellies. But it beats me how a body could have got under those stone slabs on the outbuilding floor without a little human intervention, don't you think, sir?”

It was a blustery afternoon in April 1941 when she appeared in our shop for the first time. Even in her land-girl uniform, the green V-neck pullover, biscuit-coloured blouse, green tie and brown corduroy knee-breeches, she looked like a film star.

She wasn't very tall, perhaps about five foot two or three, and the drab uniform couldn't hide the kind of figure I've heard men whistle at in the street. She had a pale, heart-shaped face, perfectly proportioned nose and mouth, and the biggest, deepest, bluest eyes I had ever seen. Her blonde hair cascaded from her brown felt hat, which she wore at a jaunty angle and held on with one hand as she walked in from the street.

I was immediately put in mind of Hardy's novel
A Pair of Blue Eyes
, which I had read only a few weeks previously. Like Elfride Swancourt's, this land-girl's eyes were “a sublimation of her.” They were “a misty and shady blue, that had no beginning or surface . . . looked into rather than at.” Those eyes also had a way of making you feel you were the only person in the world when she talked to you.

“Nasty out, isn't it? I don't suppose you've got five Woodbines for sale, have you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Sorry,” I said. “We don't have any cigarettes at all.” It was one of the toughest times we'd had in the war thus far: the Luftwaffe was bombing our cities to ruins; the U-boats were sinking Atlantic convoys at an alarming rate; and the meat ration had just been dropped to only one and tenpence a week. But here she was, bold as brass, a stranger, walking into the shop and without a by-your-leave asking for cigarettes!

I was lying, of course. We did have cigarettes, but what small supply we had we kept under the counter for our registered customers. We certainly didn't go selling them to strange and beautiful land-girls with eyes out of Thomas Hardy novels.

I was just on the point of telling her to try fluttering her eyelashes at one of the airmen knocking about the village—holding my tongue never having been my strongest point—when she totally disarmed me with a sequence of reactions.

First she thumped the counter with her little fist and cursed. Then, a moment later, she bit the corner of her lower lip and broke into a bright smile. “I didn't think you would have,” she said, “but it was worth asking. I ran out the day before yesterday and I'm absolutely gasping for a fag. Oh, well, can't be helped.”

“Are you the new land-girl at Top Hill Farm?” I asked, curious now, and beginning to feel more than a little guilty about my deceit.

She smiled again. “Word gets around quickly, doesn't it?” “It's a small village.”

“So I see. Anyway, that's me. Gloria Stringer.” Then she held her hand out. I thought it rather an odd gesture for a woman, especially around these parts, but I took it. Her hand was soft and slightly moist like a summer leaf after rain. Mine felt coarse and heavy, wrapped around such a delicate thing. I always was an ungainly and awkward child, but never did I feel this so much as during that first meeting with Gloria. “Gwen Shackleton,” I muttered, more than a trifle embarrassed. “Pleased to meet you.”

Gloria rested her hand palm down on the counter, cocked one hip forward and looked around. “Not a lot to do around here, is there?” she said.

I smiled. “Not a lot.” I knew what she meant, of course, but it still struck me as an odd, even insensitive, thing to say. I got up at six o'clock every morning to run the shop, and on top of that I spent one night a week fire-watching—a bit of a joke around these parts until the Spinner's Inn was burned down by a stray incendiary bomb in February and two people were killed. I also helped with the local Women's Voluntary Service. Most days, after the nine o'clock news, I was exhausted and ready to fall asleep the minute my head hit the pillow.