Banks filled him in on the details while Gristhorpe busied himself with the scene-of-crime team.
Glendenning, kneeling by the corpse, kept shooing the others away like flies. At last, he packed his bag and struggled back over the beck, stretching out his arms for balance like a tightrope walker. With one hand he clung on to his brown bag, and in the other he held a test tube.
‘Bloody awkward place to go finding a corpse,’ he grumbled, as if the superintendent were personally responsible.
‘Aye, well,’ Gristhorpe replied, ‘we don’t get to pick and choose in our business. I don’t suppose you can tell us much till after the post-mortem?’
Glendenning screwed up his face against the smoke that rose from his cigarette. ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Looks like a stab wound to me. Probably pierced the heart from under the ribcage.’
‘Then someone got very close to him indeed,’ Gristhorpe said. ‘It must have been someone he knew and trusted.’
Glendenning sniffed. ‘I’ll leave that kind of speculation to you boys, if you don’t mind. There are lacerations and blows to the face, too. Can’t say what did it at the moment, or when it was done. Been dead about ten days. Not more than twelve.’
‘How can you be certain?’ Banks asked, startled by the information.
‘I can’t be certain, laddie,’ Glendenning said, ‘that’s the problem. Between ten and twelve days doesn’t count as accurate with me. I might be able to be more precise after the PM, but no promises. Those chappies over there have got a bag to put him in. He’ll need to soak in a Lysol bath for a day or two.’ Glendenning smiled and held up his test tube. ‘Maggots,’ he said. ‘Calliphora erythrocephalus, if I’m not mistaken.’
The three detectives looked at the white, slow-moving blobs and exchanged puzzled glances.
Glendenning sighed and spoke as he would to a group of backward children. ‘Simple really. Bluebottle larvae. The bluebottle lays its eggs in daylight, usually when the sun’s shining. If the weather’s warm, as it has been lately, they hatch on the first day. Then you get what’s called the “first instar” maggot. That wee beauty sheds its skin like a snake after eight to fourteen hours, and then the second instar, the one you use for fishing’ — and here he glanced at Gristhorpe, a keen angler — ‘that one eats like a pig for five or six days before going into its pupa case. Look at these, gentlemen.’ He held up the test tube again. ‘These, as you can see, are fat maggots. Lazy. Mature. And they’re not in their pupa cases yet. Therefore, they must have been laid nine or ten days ago. Add on a day or so for the bluebottles to find the body and lay, and you’ve got twelve days at the outside.’
It was the most eloquent and lengthy speech Banks had ever heard Glendenning deliver. There was obviously a potential teacher in the brusque chain-smoking Scot with the trail of ash like the Milky Way down his waistcoat.
The doctor smiled at his audience. ‘Simpson,’ he said.
‘Pardon?’ Banks asked.
‘Simpson. Keith Simpson. I studied under him. Our equivalent of Sherlock Holmes, only Simpson’s real.’
‘I see,’ said Banks, who had learned to tease after so long in Yorkshire. ‘A kind of real-life Quincy, you mean?’ He felt Gristhorpe nudge him in the ribs.
Glendenning scowled and a half-inch of ash fell off the end of his cigarette. ‘Quite,’ he said, and put the test tube in his bag. ‘I hope that glorified truss over there can get me back down safely.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Gristhorpe assured him. ‘It will. And thank you very much.’
‘Aye. Now I have first-hand knowledge of what it feels like to have my arse in a sling,’ Glendenning said as he walked away.
Banks laughed and turned back to watch the experts at work. The photographs had been taken, and the team were busy searching the ground around the body.
‘We’ll need a more thorough search of the area,’ Gristhorpe said to Hatchley. ‘Can you get that organized, Sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Hatchley took out his notebook and pen. ‘I’ll get some men in from Helmthorpe and Eastvale.’
‘Tell them to look particularly for evidence of anything recently buried or burned. He must have been carrying a rucksack. We’re also looking for the weapon, a knife of some kind. And I think, Sergeant,’ Gristhorpe went on, ‘we’d better bring DC Richmond in on this after all. Get him to check on missing persons with the Police National Computer.’
Vic Manson, the fingerprint expert, approached them, shaking his head. ‘It’ll not be easy,’ he complained. ‘There might be prints left on three or four fingers but I can’t promise anything. I’ll try wax injections to unwrinkle the skin, and if they don’t work, it’ll have to be formaldehyde and alum.’
‘It’ll be a devil of a job finding out who he was,’ Banks said. ‘Even if we can get prints, there’s no guaranteeing they’ll be on record. And someone’s gone to great lengths to make sure we can’t recognize him by his face.’
‘There’s always the clothes,’ Gristhorpe said. ‘Or teeth. Though I can’t say I’ve ever had much luck with them myself.’
‘Me neither,’ Banks agreed. He always thought it amusing when he watched television detectives identify bodies from dental charts. If they really knew how long it would take every dentist in the country to search through every chart in his files… Only if the police already had some idea who the body was could dental charts confirm or deny the identity.
‘He might even be German,’ Hatchley added. ‘Or an American. You get a lot of foreigners walking the fells these days.’
Across the beck, two men wearing face masks slid the body into the large zip-up bag they had brought. Banks grimaced as he watched them brush off the maggots, shed in all directions, before they were finally able to secure the zip. They then started to carry their burden along the valley towards the winch.
‘Let’s go,’ Gristhorpe said. ‘It’s getting late. There’s nothing more to be done here till we can start a search. We’d better post a couple of men here for the night though. If the killer knows we’ve discovered the body and he’s buried important evidence nearby, he might come back after dark.’
Hatchley nodded.
‘We’ll arrange to send someone up,’ Gristhorpe went on. ‘You’d better stick around till they get here, Sergeant. See if you can persuade the rescue people to wait for them with the winch. If not, they’ll just have to come the long way, like we did.’
Banks saw Hatchley glance towards where the corpse had lain and shiver. He didn’t envy anyone stuck with the job of staying in this enchanted valley after dark.
Sam took Katie as roughly as usual in bed that night. And as usual she lay there and gave the illusion of enjoying herself. At least it didn’t hurt any more like it had at first. There were some things you had to do, some sins you had to commit because men were just made that way and you needed a man to take care of you in the world. The important thing, Katie had learned from her grandmother, was that you must not enjoy it. Grit your teeth and give them what they want, yes, even cheat a little and make them think you like it — especially if they treat you badly when you don’t seem enthusiastic — but under no circumstances should you find pleasure in it.
It never lasted long. That was one consolation. Soon Sam started breathing quickly, and she clung to him tighter and mouthed the sounds he liked to hear, told him the things he liked to know. At last he grunted and made her all wet. Then he rolled over on his side and quickly began snoring.