“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Hatchley said. “I’d imagine quite a few of them have got skeletons in their cupboards.”
“Ouch.”
They were sitting in the Golden Grill, just across the street from Eastvale Divisional HQ. Outside, Market Street was packed with tourists, jackets or cardigans slung over their shoulders, cameras around their necks. Like sheep up on the unfenced moorland roads, they strayed all over the narrow street. The local delivery vans had to inch through, horns blaring.
Most of the tables were already taken, but they had managed to find one near the back. Once the two of them had sat down and given their orders to the bustling waitress, Banks told Hatchley about the skeleton. By the time he had finished, their order arrived.
Banks knew his sergeant had a reputation as an idle sod and a thug. His appearance didn’t help. Hatchley was big, slow-moving and bulky, like a rugby prop forward gone to seed, with straw hair, pink complexion, freckles and a piggy nose. His suits were shiny, ties egg-stained, and he usually looked as if he had just been dragged through a hedge backward. But it had always been Banks’s experience that once Hatchley got his teeth into something, he was a stubborn and dogged copper, and damned difficult to shake off. The problem lay in getting him motivated in the first place.
“Anyway, we think we know who the victim was, but we want to cover all possibilities. What I’d like you to do is take PC Bridges and go down to London tomorrow. Here’s a list of information I’d like.” Banks passed over a sheet of paper.
Hatchley glanced at it, then looked up. “Can’t I take WPC Sexton instead?”
Banks grinned. “Ellie Sexton? And you a married man. I’m ashamed of you, Jim.”
Hatchley winked. “Spoilsport.”
Banks looked at his watch. “Before you go, could you put out a nationwide request for information on similar crimes in the same time period? This is a bit tricky because it’s an old crime and they’ll drag their feet. But there’s a chance someone might have something unsolved with a similar MO on the books. I’ll put someone on checking our local records, too.”
“You think this was part of a series?”
“I don’t know, Jim, but what Dr. Glendenning told me about the manner of death made me think I shouldn’t overlook that possibility. I’ve also asked the SOCOs to broaden their search to include the general Hobb’s End area. Given what I’ve just heard from Dr. Glendenning about the way she died, I wouldn’t like to think we’re sitting on another 25 Cromwell Street without knowing it.”
“I’m sure the press would have a field day with that,” said Hatchley. “They could call it the Hobb’s End House of Horrors. Nice ring to it.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Aye.” Hatchley paused and finished his tea cake. “This DS Cabbot you’re working with down Harkside,” said Hatchley. “I don’t think I’ve come across him yet. What’s he like?”
“She’s pretty new around here,” Banks said. “But she seems to be working out okay.”
“She?” Hatchley raised his eyebrows. “Bit of all right, then?”
“Depends on your type. Anyway, you seem to be showing a dangerous interest in these things for a man with a wife and child of his own. How are Carol and April, by the way?”
“They’re fine.”
“Over the teething?”
“A long time ago, that were. But thanks for asking, sir.”
Banks finished his tea cake. “Look, Jim,” he said, “if I’ve been a bit distant this past while, you know, haven’t shown much interest in you and your family, it’s just that… well, I’ve had a lot of problems. There’s been a few changes. A lot to get used to.”
“Aye.”
Bloody hell, Banks thought. Aye. The word with a thousand meanings. He struggled on. “Anyway, if you thought I ignored you or cut you out in any way, I apologize.”
Hatchley paused for a moment, eyes everywhere but on Banks. Finally, he clasped his hamlike hands on the red-and-white-checked tablecloth, still avoiding eye contact. “Let’s just forget about it, shall we, sir. Water under the bridge. We’ve all had our crosses to bear these past few months, maybe you more than most of us. Talking of crosses, I suppose you’ve heard they’re changing our name to Crime Management?”
Banks nodded. “Yes.”
Hatchley mimicked picking up a telephone. “Good morning, Crime Management here, madam. How can we help you? Not enough crime in your neighborhood. Dear, dear. Well, yes, I’m certain there’s some to spare on the East Side Estate. Yes, I’ll look into it right away and see if I can get some sent over by this afternoon. Bye-bye, madam.”
Banks laughed.
“I mean, really,” Hatchley went on. “If this goes on they’ll be calling you a Senior Crime Consultant next.”
The door opened and WPC Sexton walked over to them. Hatchley nudged Banks and pointed. “Here she is. The belle of Eastvale Divisional.”
“Fuck off, Sarge,” she said, then turned to Banks. “Sir, we just got an urgent message from a DS Cabbot in Harkside. She wants you to get down there as soon as you can. She said a lad named Adam Kelly has something he wants to tell you.”
The telegram, in its unmistakable orange cover, came to the shop, for some reason. I remember the date; it was Palm Sunday, the eighteenth of April, 1943, and Mother and I had just got back from church. Gloria was working that day, so, heart thumping and heavy, I had to leave Mother to her tears and run up to Top Hill Farm. Though it was a chilly afternoon, the sweat was pouring off me by the time I got there.
I found Gloria collecting eggs in the chicken shack. She had one in her palm and she held it out to show me. “It’s so warm,” she said. “Freshly laid. But what are you doing here, Gwen? You look out of breath. Your eyes. Have you been crying?”
Panting, I handed over the telegram to her. She read it, her face turned ashen and she sagged back against the flimsy wooden wall. A nail squealed in the wood and the chickens squawked. The sheet of paper fluttered from her tiny hand to the dirt floor. She didn’t cry right there and then, but a soft moan came from her mouth. “Oh, no,” she said. “No.” Almost as if she had been expecting it. Then her whole body started to tremble. I wanted to go to her, but somehow I knew that I mustn’t. Not just yet, not until she had let the first pangs of grief shake her and rip through her alone.
She closed her hand by her side and the egg broke. Bright yellow yolk stained her dainty fingers, and long strings of viscous glair trailed down toward the straw-covered earth.
The Kellys’ house stood in the middle of a terrace block on the B-road east of Harkside. There was an infants’ school across the road, and next to that a Pay ’n’ Display car park to encourage tourists not to clog the village center. Beyond the car park, a meadow full of buttercups and clover descended eastward to the West Yorkshire border and the banks of Linwood Reservoir.
Mrs. Kelly answered the door and asked them in. Banks could sense the tension immediately. The aftermath of a scolding; it was a familiar childhood sensation of his, and the scoldings were usually dished out by his mother. Though it was never openly admitted, Banks knew his father believed that household discipline was a woman’s job. Only if Banks cheeked her off or tried to resist did his father step in and sort things out with his belt.
“He won’t say owt,” Mrs. Kelly said. She was a plain, harried-looking woman in her early thirties, old before her time, with limp, tired hair and a drawn face. “I challenged him on it when he came home for his lunch, and he ran off up to his room. He wouldn’t go back to school and he won’t come down.”
“Challenged him on what, Mrs. Kelly?” Banks asked.
“What he stole.”