“As I said, we don’t really know what’s wrong. He refuses to communicate. It’s a good sign that he came home, though. He knew his way and he negotiated the journey with what little money he took.”
“Took.”
“Ah, yes. Please don’t worry about it. We hadn’t supplied him with any clothes or money. He took another patient’s suit before he left.”
“Will there-”
“Don’t worry. The other patient is most understanding. He knows something of what your brother has been through. Please don’t worry about it any further.”
“But the money?”
“There wasn’t much. Enough for his train fare and perhaps a bite to eat.”
“He doesn’t look as if he’s eaten in months. Is there any treatment? Will he get better?”
“It’s impossible to say. There are treatments.”
“What sort of treatments?”
“Narcosynthesis is the most common.”
“And that is?”
“A drug-induced reenactment of the traumatic episode, or episodes. It’s used to assist the ego to accept what happened.”
“But if you don’t know what the traumatic episode was…?”
“There are ways of getting at that. But I don’t want to get your hopes up. The problem is, of course, that Matthew can’t express himself vocally, and that could mean a severe limitation in the value of narcosynthesis.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I suggest you tell me where you live and I’ll do my best to put you in touch with a doctor who knows about these things.”
I told him where I lived and where it was.
“It may mean visits to Leeds,” he said.
“That will be no problem.”
“I promise I’ll get working on it. In the meantime, just take good care of him. I don’t think I need to tell you that he has suffered appallingly.”
“No. Thank you, Doctor.” I put down the receiver and went back upstairs.
Matthew was sitting staring toward the window, though not through it, and Mother and Gloria seemed at their wits’ end.
“I’ve tried to talk to him, Gwen,” Gloria said, voice quivering. “I don’t think he even knows me. I don’t think he even knows where he is.”
I told her some of what the doctor had said. “He came back here, didn’t he?” I said, to comfort her. “He made his way here by himself. It was the only place he knew to come. Home. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine now he’s back with the people who love him.”
Gloria nodded, but she didn’t seem convinced. I couldn’t blame her; I wasn’t convinced, either.
It was a long time since Banks had driven up the rutted driveway in front of Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s squat stone house on the daleside above Lyndgarth.
As expected, he found Gristhorpe out back working on his drystone wall. Walling was a hobby the superintendent had taken up years ago. It was the ideal pointless activity; his wall went nowhere and fenced nothing in. He said he found it relaxing, like some form of meditation. You could just empty your mind and get in harmony with the natural world. So he said. Maybe the super and Annie would have a lot in common.
Gristhorpe was wearing a baggy pair of brown corduroy trousers held up by frayed red braces, and a checked shirt that might once have had a white background. He was holding a triangular lump of limestone in his hand and squinting at the wall. When Banks approached, he turned. His pockmarked face was redder than usual after the sun and exertion. He was also sweating, and his unruly mop of thatched hair lay plastered to his skull. Was it a trick of the light, Banks wondered, or was Gristhorpe suddenly looking old?
“Alan,” he said. It wasn’t a greeting, or a question. Just a statement. Hard to tell anything much from the flat tone.
“Sir.”
Gristhorpe pointed toward the wall. “They say a good waller doesn’t put a stone aside once he’s picked it up,” he said, then looked at the rock in his hand. “I wish I could figure out where to put this bugger.” He paused for a moment, then he tossed the stone back on the pile, slapped his hands on his trousers to get rid of the dust and walked over. “You’ll have a glass of something?”
“Anything cold.”
“Coke, then. I’ve got some in the fridge. We’ll sit out here.” Gristhorpe pointed to two fold-up chairs in the shade by the back wall of the old farmhouse.
Banks sat down. He thought he could see some tiny figures making their way along the limestone escarpment that ran along the top of Fremlington Hill.
Gristhorpe came out with two glasses of Coke, handed one to Banks and sat down beside him. At first, neither of them spoke.
Finally, Gristhorpe broke the silence. “I hear Jimmy Riddle’s given you a real case to work on.”
“Sort of. I’m sure he thinks of it as more of a dead end.”
Gristhorpe raised his bushy eyebrows. “Is it?”
“I don’t think so.” Banks told Gristhorpe what he and Annie Cabbot had discovered so far and handed him the button Adam Kelly had taken from the skeleton’s hand. “It’s impossible to say,” he went on, “but it might have been in the victim’s hand. It was certainly buried with her, and it didn’t walk there. She could have ripped it from her attacker’s uniform when she was being strangled.”
Gristhorpe examined the button and took a sip of Coke. “It looks like an American Army Air Force button,” he said. “I could be wrong – it’s so old and corroded it’s hard to tell – but that design looks like the American eagle. It’s not what the husband would have been wearing, even if he had been in uniform. Not from what you’ve told me. And it’s very unlikely that he would have been in uniform if he had been liberated from a Japanese POW camp and repatriated.”
“So you think it’s American?”
Gristhorpe weighed the metal in his palm. “I wouldn’t swear to it in court,” he said. “The American armed forces were very casual dressers compared to our lot. Most of the time they wore ‘Ike’ jackets with hidden front buttons, but this could have come from the collar. Usually it was worn on the right side. Officers wore them left or right, with the branch of service below. GIs not assigned to any specific service wore the eagle on both sides.”
“If she was being strangled,” said Banks, “then it’s quite likely she reached out to try to scratch her attacker’s face and grab at his collar. Gloria and her friends went around with a group of American airmen from Rowan Woods.”
Gristhorpe handed back the button. “It sounds like a reasonable theory to me.”
“There’s another thing that puzzles me. Matthew Shackleton committed suicide in 1950. Shot himself. I’m wondering where he got the gun.”
“Anyone can get a gun if he wants one badly enough. Even today.”
“He was in no state to go out and buy one on the black market, even if he knew where to look.”
“So you’re assuming he already had it?”
“Yes, but he wouldn’t have had one in the prison camp, would he?”
“He could have got it from someone on his way home. Long journey, lots of opportunities.”
“I suppose so. All we know is that he went missing presumed dead in Burma in 1943, turned up at Hobb’s End again in March 1945, then committed suicide in Leeds in 1950. It’s a long gap.”
“What kind of gun was it?”
“A Colt forty-five automatic.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Why?”
“That was the gun the American military issued their servicemen. It raises interesting possibilities, doesn’t it? American button in the wife’s hand. American gun in the husband’s mouth.”
Banks nodded. Though what the possibilities were, he hadn’t a clue. The two events were separated by five years, more or less, and happened in different places. He sipped some more Coke.
“How’s Sandra?” Gristhorpe asked.
“Fine, as far as I know.”
“I’m sorry about what happened, Alan.”
“Me, too.”
Gristhorpe gazed at a point in space somewhere above Fremlington Edge. “This Annie Cabbot,” he said. “What’s she like?”
Banks felt himself blush. “She’s good,” he said.
“Too good for a godforsaken outpost like Harksmere?”
“I think so.”
“Then what’s she doing there?”
“I don’t know.” Banks glanced sideways at Gristhorpe. “Maybe she pissed somebody off, like I did.”
Gristhorpe narrowed his eyes. “Alan,” he said, “I don’t approve of what you did last year, taking off like that without so much as a by-your-leave. You dropped me right in it. I can see why you did it. I might even have done it myself in your place. But I can’t condone it. And while it pulled your chestnuts out of the fire in one sense, it’s probably dropped them in it in another way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jimmy Riddle already hated you. He also hates being proved wrong, especially after he’s done his crowing to the press. Your maverick actions helped solve the case, but now he hates you even more. I can’t do anything for you. You must be aware your grasp at Eastvale is pretty tenuous, to say the least.”
Banks stood up. “I’m not asking for any favors.”
“Sit down, Alan. Hear me out.”
Banks sat and fumbled for a cigarette. “I’d probably have looked for a transfer before now,” he said, “but I’ve had a few other things on my mind.”
“Aye, I know. And I know you’d not ask for any favors, either. That’s not your way. I might have a bit of good news for you, though, if you can promise to keep it to yourself.”
“Good news. That makes a change.”
“Between you and me and the stone wall, Jimmy Riddle might not be around much longer.”
Banks could hardly believe his ears. “What? Riddle’s retiring? At his age?”
“A little bird tells me that the crooked finger of politics beckons. As you know, he can’t enter into that as a copper, so you tell me what the logical solution is.”
“Politics?”
“Aye. His local Conservative member is practically gaga. Not that anyone would notice something like that much in the House. High-echelon rumor has it that Riddle has already had several interviews with the selections committee and they’re pleased with him. Like I said, Alan, this is just between you and me.”
“Of course.”
“There’s no guarantee he’ll go. Or get elected, for that matter. Though the Conservative seat around here is so secure they could put Saddam Hussein up and he’d probably win it. Even if Riddle does go, he’ll leave a bad smell around and swear it’s yours. So I’m not saying there’s no damage done. For a start, a lot depends on whether we get a CC who can tell the smell of shit from perfume.”
Banks began to feel a sort of warm glow deep inside. An interesting case. Annie Cabbot. Now this. Maybe there was a God, after all. Maybe his dry season really was coming to an end.
“Do you know,” he said, “it might even be worth voting Conservative, just to make sure the bastard wins his seat.”