In a Dry Season (8 page)

That was it. Nothing happened. Just a dream of light.

But the intense feeling of well-being it gave him, as warm and bright as the sunlight itself, still suffused him when he awoke, disappointed to find himself alone and hung-over on the sofa in the Eastvale semi.

When Sandra decided a few weeks later that their separation was to be permanent—or at least that reconciliation wasn't imminent—they sold the semi. Sandra got the television and
VCR
; Banks got the stereo and the lion's share of the
CD
collection. That was fair; he had collected them in the first place. They split the kitchenware, and for some obscure reason, Sandra also took the tin-opener. Books and clothes were easily divided, and they sold most of the furniture. All in all, there hadn't been a hell of a lot to show for more than twenty years of marriage. Even after the sale, Banks didn't care much where or how he lived, until a few weeks in a bed-and-breakfast place straight out of Bill Bryson changed his mind.

He began to seek isolation. When he first saw the cottage from the outside, he didn't think much of it. The view of the dale was terrific, as was the seclusion afforded by the woods, the beck, and the ash grove between the cottage and Gratly itself, but it was a squat, ugly little place that needed a lot of work.

A typical Dales mix of limestone, grit and flag, it had originally been a farm labourer's cottage. Carved into the gritstone doorhead was the date
1768
and the initials
JH
, probably the time it was built and the initials of the first owner. Banks wondered who
JH
was and what had become of him. Mrs Perkins, the present owner, had lost both her two sons and her husband, and she was finally leaving to move in with her sister in Tadcaster.

Inside, the place didn't make much more of an impression
at first, either; it smelled of camphor and mould, and all the furniture and decor seemed dark and dingy. Downstairs was a living-room with a stone fireplace at one end, and upstairs, only two small bedrooms. The bathroom and toilet had been tacked onto the kitchen at the back, as they often were in such old houses. Plumbing was pretty primitive back in
1768
.

Banks was not a believer in visions and prescience, but he would have been a fool to deny that when he walked into the kitchen that day he experienced the same feeling of well-being and peace he had experienced in the dream. It looked different, of course, but he knew it was the same place, the one in his dream.

What it all meant, he had no idea, except that he had to have the cottage.

He didn't think he would be able to afford it; properties in the Dales were fetching astronomical prices. But fortune and human eccentricity proved to be on his side for once. Mrs Perkins had no love whatsoever for the holiday cottage trade and no particular greed for mere money. She wanted to sell to someone who would actually
live
in the cottage. As soon as she found out that Banks was looking for just such a place, and that his name was the same as her maiden name, the deal was as good as done. The only black mark against Banks was that he wasn't
born
a Yorkshireman, but she took to him anyway, convinced they were related, and she even flirted with him in that way some old ladies have.

When she let him have the place for fifty thousand pounds, probably about half of what she could have got, telling him it would be enough to see her to her grave, Dimmoch, the estate agent, groaned and shook his head in disbelief. Afterwards, Banks always had the impression that
Dimmoch suspected him of exerting undue pressure on Mrs Perkins.

The cottage became Banks's long-term project—his therapy, his refuge and, he hoped, his salvation. In an odd way, he felt, working on the cottage was like working on himself. Both needed renovating, and both had a long way to go. It was all new to him; he had never had the faintest interest in
DIY
or gardening before; nor had he been much inclined to self-analysis or introspection. But somehow he had lost his way over the past year, and he wanted to find a new one; he had also lost something of himself, and he wanted to know what it was. So far, he had fitted some pine cupboards in the kitchen, like the ones in his dream, installed a shower unit to replace the claw-footed Victorian bathtub, and painted the living-room. It hadn't kept the depression away completely, but made it more manageable; at least he could always drag himself out of bed in the morning now, even if he didn't always view the day ahead with any real relish.

A nightbird called out far in the distance—a broken, eerie cry, as if perhaps some predator were threatening its nest. Banks stubbed out his cigarette and went back inside. As he got ready for bed, he thought of the skeletal hand, possibly human; he thought of
DS
Cabbot, definitely human; he thought of Hobb's End, that lost, ruined village suddenly risen from the depths with its secrets; and somewhere in his mind, in the darkness way beyond the realms of logic and reason, he heard an echo, a click, felt something intangible connect across the years.

Three

B
anks watched from the edge of the woods the next morning as the
SOCOS
slowly lifted the skeleton from its muddy grave under the expert direction of John Webb. First, they had to take down the wall next to which the bones were buried, then they made a trench around the area and dug down until the bones were exposed, about three feet below the surface. Next, they slipped a thin sheet of metal into the earth under the bones, and finally they got it in place, ready to lift out.

The bones came up on the metal sheet, still packed in earth, and four
SOCO
pallbearers carried it up the slope, where they laid it out on the grass at Banks's feet like a burnt offering. It had just gone eleven, and
DS
Cabbot still hadn't shown up. Banks had already talked to Adam Kelly, who hadn't been able to add anything to his previous statement.

Adam was still shaken, but Banks sensed a resilience in him that he had also possessed as an early adolescent. Banks, too, had loved playing in derelict houses, of which there had been plenty in postwar Peterborough. The worst he had ever come away with was a scraped knee, but a pupil from the girls' school had been killed by a falling rafter, so he knew how dangerous they could be. The council was
always boarding them up. Anyway, Adam's little adventure had done no lasting harm, and it would give him stories to tell well into the school term. He would enjoy celebrity status of a kind among his pals for a while.

Banks stared at the filthy, twisted shape at his feet. It hardly
looked
human. The bones had taken on the muddy brown colour of the earth they had lain in for so long; they were also crusted with dark grungy muck. It stuck to the ribs the way a hearty stew was supposed to do, and it clung to various joints, clogging the cavities and crevices. The skull looked full of it—mud in the mouth, the nose, the eye-sockets—and some of the long bones looked like old, rusted metal pipes that had been underground for years.

The sight of it all made Banks feel vaguely sick. He had seen much worse without throwing up, of course—at least there were no gaping red holes, no spilled intestines, no legs cut off at the thighs, skin riding up over the raw edges like a tight skirt—but he hadn't seen much uglier.

The
SOCOS
had already photographed the skeleton during every stage of its excavation, and once they had finished carrying it up the hill, they went back down and started their detailed search of the area, digging deeper and farther afield, leaving John Webb to give it a poke here and a scrape there. Webb also searched through the dirt for any objects that had been buried at the same time—buttons, jewellery, that sort of thing.

Banks leaned back against a tree trunk, as if on sentry duty, kept his nausea under control and watched Webb work. He was tired; he had not slept well after his late-night musings. Most of the night he had tossed and turned, waking up often from fragments of nightmares that scuttled off into dark corners when he woke, like
cockroaches when you turn on the light. The morning heat made him drowsy. Giving in to the feeling for a moment, he closed his eyes and rested his head on the tree. He could feel the rough bark against his crown, and the sunlight made kaleidoscopic patterns behind his eyelids. He was at the edge of sleep when he heard a rustling behind him, then a voice.

“Morning, sir. Rough night?”

“Something like that,” said Banks, moving away from the tree trunk.

DS
Cabbot stared down at the bones. “So this is what we all come to in the end, is it?” She didn't sound particularly concerned about it; no more troubled than she seemed about turning up so late.

“Any luck?” Banks asked.

“That's what took me so long. The university year hasn't started yet and a lot of profs are still away on holiday, or busy running research projects overseas. Anyway, I've tracked down a Dr Ioan Williams, University of Leeds. He's a physical anthropologist with a fair bit of experience in forensic work. He sounded pretty excited by what we've found. Must be having a dull summer.”

“How quickly can he get to it?”

“He said if we could get the remains to the university lab as soon as possible, he'd have his assistants clean them up, then he'd manage a quick look by early evening. Only a preliminary look, mind you.”

“Good,” said Banks. “The sooner we know what we're dealing with here, the better.”

If the skeleton had been lying there for a hundred years or more, the investigation wouldn't really be worth pursuing with any great vigour, as they would be hardly likely to
catch a living criminal. On the other hand,
if
it turned out to be a murder victim, and
if
it had been buried there during or since the war, there was a chance that somebody still living might remember something. And there was also a chance that the killer was still alive.

“Want me to supervise the move?” Webb asked. Banks nodded. “If you would, John. Need a mortuary wagon?”

Webb held his hand over his eyes to shield the sun as he looked up. A few of the silver hairs in his beard caught the light. “My old Range Rover will do just fine. I'll get one of the lads to drive while I stay in the back and make sure our friend here doesn't fall to pieces.” He looked at his watch. “With any luck, we can have it in the lab by one o'clock.”

DS
Cabbot leaned back against a tree, arms folded, one leg crossed over the other. Today she was wearing a red T-shirt and white Nikes with her jeans, her sunglasses pushed up over her hairline. Pretty loose dress codes at Harkside, it seemed to Banks, but then he was one to talk. He had always hated suits and ties, right from his early days as a business student at London Polytechnic. He had spent three years there on a sandwich course—six months college and six months work—and the student life fast made encroachments on his dedication to the business world. Everyone at the poly was joining up with the sixties thing back then, even though it was the early seventies; it was all caftans, bell-bottoms and Afghans, bright, embroidered Indian cheesecloth shirts, bandannas, beads, the whole caboodle. Banks had never committed himself fully to the spirit of the times, neither in philosophy nor in dress, but he had let his hair grow over his collar, and he
was once sent home from work for wearing sandals and a flowered tie.

“I need to know a lot more about the village,” he said to
DS
Cabbot. “Some names would be a great help. Try the Voters' Register and the Land Registry.” He pointed towards the ruins of the cottage near the bridge. “The outbuilding clearly belonged to that cottage, so I'd like to know who lived there and who the neighbours were. It seems to me that we've got three possibilities. Either we're dealing with someone who used the empty village as a dumping spot to bury a body during the time it was in disuse—”

“Between May
1946
and August
1953
. I checked this morning.”

“Right. Either then, or the body was buried while the village was still occupied, before May
1946
, and the victim wasn't buried too far from home. Or it was put there this summer, as you suggested earlier. It's too early for speculation, but we do need to know who lived in that cottage when, and if anyone from the village was reported missing.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What happened to the church? I'm assuming there was one.”

“A church and a chapel. St Bartholomew's was decon-secrated, then demolished.”

“Where are the parish records now?”

“I don't know. Never had cause to seek them out. I imagine they were moved to St Jude's in Harkside, along with all the coffins from the graveyard.”

“They might be worth a look if you draw a blank elsewhere. You never know what you can find out from old
church records and parish magazines. There's the local newspaper, too. What's it called?”

“The
Harkside Chronicle
.”

“Right. Might be worth looking there, too, if our expert can narrow the range a bit this evening. And
DS
Cabbot?”

“Sir?”

“Look, I can't keep calling you
DS
Cabbot. What's your first name?”

She smiled. “Annie, sir. Annie Cabbot.”

“Right, Annie Cabbot, do you happen to know how many doctors or dentists there were in Hobb's End?”

“I shouldn't imagine there were many. Most people probably went to Harkside. Maybe there were a few more around when everyone was working in the flax mill. Very altruistic, very concerned about their workers' welfare, some of these old mill owners.”

“Very concerned they were fit to work a sixteen-hour shift without dropping dead, more like,” said Banks.

Annie laughed. “Bolshevik.”