Sleeping in the Ground: An Inspector Banks Novel (Inspector Banks Novels)

by Peter Robinson

  Over the page was yet another list, this time of books: The Making of the British Landscape, The Pennine Dales, High Dale Country, Yorkshire Villages, Walks in Swaledale and Wensleydale, A History of Cricket, along with books on military history by Antony Beevor, Ian Kershaw, John Keegan and others.

  Gerry put the exercise book down and leaned back in the chair. So Vincent had been grooming Martin Edgeworth. He had staked out the shooting club and spied on several members, finally deciding on Edgeworth, no doubt because he lived alone in an isolated house. After that, he must have made it his business to meet Edgeworth, get chatting, probably on long walks so they were less likely to be seen together. He had found out about the guns Edgeworth owned, which suited his purposes, and the more he learned about Edgeworth’s tastes and interests, the more he could read up on and feign an interest of his own; hence the books on local history and geography, military history, rambling and cricket.

  There were no signs of any of the books in the caravan, so Gerry assumed he must have either borrowed them from a local library or perhaps skimmed them in the library. There were pages of notes about the various subjects covered by the books, so he had clearly done his homework and turned himself into someone who had a lot in common with Martin Edgeworth. And he had done it all fairly quickly. The longer Edgeworth remained alive, the greater the possibility of something going wrong. It was a cruel and calculating thing to do to get revenge, a dish served very cold indeed. Gazing down the length of the caravan to the neat bed, she could see nothing out of place. She would bring in a team of experts to take the place apart, and they might find something else. But that would take time. Besides, she thought what she had found was incriminating enough, though it didn’t tell her where he had taken Maureen Tindall. On a whim, she nipped outside and bent to check underneath the caravan. Nothing there, either, except the water rising.

  There wasn’t much she could do now but wait for Banks and Annie to arrive, and that could take a while, given the worsening state of the roads. Gerry laid the newspaper on the table before her and noticed something interesting. The way it was folded highlighted an article about local flood danger spots in the weather section above the crossword puzzle. Mark Vincent could have been reading this before or after he had worked on the crossword. The report showed a map of the River Swain’s course, with attention drawn to potential flood trouble spots, places in danger when the Leas, a wide swathe of meadowland on both sides of the river just west of Eastvale, became waterlogged. The closest one marked on the map was Swainsford Bridge and there was a circle of ink around it. It could just be coincidence, of course, Gerry told herself, or a pointless doodle he’d done when filling in the crossword. But it chimed with something in her memory, something she couldn’t quite grasp immediately. It was there, she knew, and it would come.

  Gerry also knew from previous experience that the Leas wouldn’t hold out much longer. The water would then spread farther north and south, over and beyond the meadowland toward some of the houses that faced the riverside beauty spot. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The water was rushing down from becks and streams high up in the hills at an alarming rate, all of it joining the Swain and swelling its already bursting banks. There were certain spots where the river narrowed and became shallower for a stretch, and as the water couldn’t soak into the waterlogged swathe of the Leas, it would back up and overflow at those narrow points with some force, creating flash floods as unpredictable and as certain to burst as aneurysms. One of those spots, marked in a newspaper Vincent had been reading, was Swainsford Bridge.

  The bridge was a single arch over the Swain, a bugger to cross because you couldn’t see if anyone was coming the other way, and it was less than a mile east of the caravan site, right in the thick of Hindswell Woods.

  Suddenly the phrases ran like a mantra through her mind and she knew what connection she was looking for.

  In the woods. Under the bridge. In the rain.

  Wendy Vincent had been killed in some woods and her body hidden under a bridge beside a broad stream. What if Vincent were, in his way, trying to emulate that murder, or at least the scene of the crime? What if Swainsford Bridge was his chosen spot? What if he had left Maureen Tindall under the bridge by the riverside for the flood to take her? Under the bridge. In the rain. Was that the place from where she was meant to contemplate her own death arriving? Vincent hadn’t intended to rape and stab Maureen Tindall, as Frank Dowson had done to his sister, but he had a twisted sense of poetic justice, and perhaps this was how he had planned things to work out.

  It was a guess, of course, but Gerry thought it was an inspired one. She could find out whether she was right easily enough by driving to Swainsford Bridge and checking it out. The road running west from the caravan site was nothing but a narrow unfenced track for over a mile or so before it came to the turning for the bridge, and it wasn’t likely to be busy now, not with everyone heading east. The only question in her mind was that, if she was right, where had Vincent gone after abandoning Maureen Tindall to her fate? Wouldn’t he want to stick around and see what happened? But she couldn’t let thoughts like that hold her back. The main thing was that Maureen’s life might be in danger, if she hadn’t been killed already.

  When Gerry got back up to her car by the site office, the chaos had diminished enough for her to maneuver her way out easily enough. Fortunately, someone had found some boards and laid them across the muddiest sections of the road. Gerry picked up her mobile as she drove, squinting at the short stretch of road her headlights illuminated in the rain and darkness.

  This time she got through to Banks, told him where she was going, what she was thinking and what she was doing.

  “It’s far too dangerous,” Banks said. “Stay where you are, and I’ll send the emergency services out to the bridge, in case you’re right. The patrol vehicle should reach you soon. We’re on our way, but these diversions are taking time. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “There’s no time,” said Gerry, narrowly avoiding a caravan that seemed to materialize out of the rain and darkness in the middle of the road. “The emergency vehicles won’t be able to get here any faster than you can. And if I’m right, it may be too late already. I’m almost there. It makes more sense this way.”

  “Not if you get yourself killed, it doesn’t.”

  “I’ll be careful. Come straight to Swainsford Bridge.”

  “Don’t do anything foolish,” said Banks. Gerry ended the call. She saw the turning for Swainsford Bridge ahead, to her left, the sandwich-board warning sign knocked on its side, yellow police tape across the road to the bridge broken in the middle and trailing in the rain.

  Gerry was about a quarter of a mile away from the bridge itself when she went through the first dip in the road. It was filled with water, which splashed up in broad sheets on either side of the car. She could feel its drag, slowing her down as she plowed through. Not far now, she told herself. Hang on.

  Soon she could see where the river narrowed, a mass of churning foam to her right, and she knew the waterlogged Leas lay not far to her left beyond the bridge. The water that gushed faster and faster down from the mountain streams into the Swain would soon have nowhere left to go. It would back up and swell the river to bursting, fill the bridge’s arch, perhaps even take the bridge with it. It had happened before.

  There was a steep bank on the side of the river. Gerry drove to its edge, where her car would be safe from any flooding, and got out, taking her torch from the boot. The bridge stood ahead, about fifty yards farther along the road, which was all downhill. She could see from where she was standing that it was blocked by more official boards declaring it unsafe. As far as she could tell, there were no other vehicles in the area. There were no houses for some distance, either. She leveled her torch and made her way slowly down to the riverside in its beam. The water was almost level with the top of the riverbank now, and it was swirling and swelling at an alarming rate as the mountain streams that fed
it poured on relentlessly.

  Gerry’s progress was difficult because she was trying to walk down at a steep angle on mud and slippery grass in heavy rain and near darkness. She fell on her backside a couple of times and slid, but managed to hang on to everything except her dignity, and this was no time to worry about that. The lashing rain was practically blinding her. At the river’s edge was a narrow footpath, like a towpath by a canal. It was already under half an inch of water. Gerry moved along it toward the bridge on her left carefully, in the light of her torch. The path was muddy, too, and water lapped over her feet. Here and there, the path had disappeared completely into the water, and she had to back up the slope a few paces to get by. If she lost her footing, that would be the end.

  She shone her torch around, scanning the banks for anything that might be Maureen Tindall. Finally, the beam picked out a bundle of some sort under the bridge, on the narrow ledge between the inside of the arch and the river. The water was slopping over the bundle but hadn’t covered it yet, or dislodged it at all. As the currents twisted and turned in the gushing stream, glinting dark and light in the moving torch beam, water occasionally splashed over it. Gerry hurried as best she could along the narrow, broken path in the weak light of her torch. She was scared. The noise of the water filled her ears and cut out all other sound. Vincent himself could be lurking somewhere nearby, even aiming a gun at her right now. And if she missed her footing and went into the river, that would be the end of her. Under the bridge, the noise was even louder, and the water hit the stone in such a way that it splashed up the walls and rained on the bundle she was slowly edging her way toward, moving sideways, hands against the stone.

  Finally, she got there and saw that the bundle was indeed Maureen Tindall, gagged and tied up in such a way that, if she moved, the rope would tighten around her neck and strangle her. Gerry held her torch in her right hand and fumbled in her pocket for her Swiss Army knife, the one her father had given her for her fourteenth birthday and told her to carry with her always. She found it and got it open, then bent and cut Maureen Tindall free, shouting in her ear for her to keep still and not to move an inch. When the ropes were loosened and Maureen could stretch out her legs and move her arms without choking, Gerry yelled to her that the ledge was narrow and fast disappearing under the rising water, and that the only way to get her out was for Gerry to grab her legs and slowly drag her backward. Maureen had to remain completely still. Even so, it would be dangerous. Gerry knew that she could easily slip on the wet path, and they could both tumble to their deaths in roaring waters, but she bit her lip and concentrated as best she could.

  She gave Maureen the torch to hold, but the light in her eyes didn’t help at all as she shuffled slowly backward, feeling for every step with her foot before advancing. It was slow and painstaking work. Luckily, Maureen had got the message and lay still, let herself be dragged. Finally, they cleared the arch of the bridge, where the path widened a few inches. But the river’s flow seemed to be getting faster and noisier. It had swelled even more since Gerry had gone in, and now there was less of the muddy path to follow.

  Gerry glanced back at the bridge and saw the water was now covering the ledge where Maureen had lain. Smashing to and fro against the sides. There was only one way to safety, and that was up the bank. Up there, on the higher ground, they would be safe. She would get Maureen into her car with the heater on, then drive her to the hospital. But the only way to get Maureen up the bank was to drag or carry her, and Gerry wasn’t sure she had the strength left. Maureen was so frozen with fear and her circulation had been cut off by the tight ropes, so she could hardly do anything but whimper.

  The fireman’s lift wouldn’t work. Not that Gerry couldn’t bear the weight—Maureen was a slight enough figure—but carrying her like that would unbalance her, and she would surely slip back or sink into the bankside mud and slide down to the water. She couldn’t make it up the slope walking upright. The only way was to get Maureen to cling around her neck without strangling her, and for Gerry to crawl on her stomach and claw her way up the slope with her hands, feel for footholds with her feet. It was slow going, even slower than the journey back from the arch. Once they slid back and almost went over the bank into the water. But Gerry held on and set off again.

  At last, she felt she had got far enough and had sufficiently dug in with her feet to take a breather. The water still roared in her ears. She glanced over her shoulder, past Maureen, and saw that it now almost filled the whole arch of the bridge.

  Gerry took a deep breath, gathered all her strength together and grabbed on to whatever she could find in the bankside for the last haul—clumps of grass, a half-buried rock, an exposed tree root. Finally, they made it. She dragged herself and Maureen onto the roadside, unhooked Maureen and rolled over on her back, where she lay gasping for breath; Maureen lay still, a few feet away, also on her back. It was only twenty yards of easy paved path to Gerry’s car now, but she wasn’t sure whether she could make it. Her whole body hurt, every muscle, every joint. She had to struggle just to fill her lungs with air on every breath. The water roared in her ears. She felt her head spinning, the world receding from her. She wanted nothing more than to sleep.

  The she heard what she thought was a slow handclap and turned her head sideways to see a figure dressed all in black standing over her.

  “Well done,” Mark Vincent said. “That was a heroic effort. Pity it all has to come to nothing.”

  17

  Banks cursed under his breath and drummed with his hands on the steering wheel. They were stuck in a long line of cars at a set of makeshift lights west of Eastvale, the already narrow country road down to one lane. They were on the north side of the river, as the main dale road was now closed. At the front of the line, beside the temporary red light, a man in a yellow slicker stood holding a lollipop sign that said stop. Just a few yards beyond the traffic disruption, they would be able to turn left along the lane toward the Riverview Caravan Park and Swainsford Bridge. But the red light seemed to be taking forever to change. A patrol car had spotted a beat-up old Clio with two people in it heading west toward Swainsford Bridge not long before. Banks guessed that had to be Vincent and Maureen Tindall, and that Gerry was either already there or on her way.

  “Calm down,” said Annie. “There’s nothing we can do. Gerry’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

  “But what if she can’t?” Banks said. “Vincent’s had survival training. He’s seen action, for crying out loud. He may be armed.”

  The rain was pattering on the car roof in time with Banks’s nervous tattoo. The patrol car in front of him had its light flashing, but that did them no good. Even if they tried to jump the queue, there was not enough space to maneuver without ending up in the ditch.

  “There’s no reason to think he’d still be hanging around,” Annie argued. “He’s probably miles away by now.”

  “She’s not answering her phone.”

  “Maybe there’s no signal out where she is. You know what Yorkshire’s like. Or maybe she can’t hear it for the rain.”

  “I don’t like it. Ah, here we go.” The gears crunched as Banks revved up too fast and set off, almost rear-ending the patrol car in front. When they had got through the one-lane closure, both he and the patrol car pulled out and speeded up, overtaking the other cars that had been in the queue and both turning left so sharply that the lead car had to brake so fast it almost skidded into the ditch. The driver honked his horn furiously. Banks ignored it and carried on following the patrol car toward Riverview.

  “Be careful!” said Annie. “It’ll do nobody any good if you drive us or the lads in front off the road and get us killed. Slow down.”

  Banks drove on, but not much slower.

  “Look,” Annie said. “There’s the caravan site. Shall we go in?”

  “No point,” said Banks. “She was on her way to Swainsford Bridge. Gerry’s like that. She only tells you she’s going to do something dangerous wh
en she’s already past the point of no return.”

  Annie quietened down and Banks drove on. Once again, he tried Gerry on both her mobile and the police radio. Nothing.

  It didn’t take him long to cover the mile and a half from Riverview to the turning for the bridge, and he slowed briefly to take in the overturned sandwich board and the broken police tape. “She’s here,” he said. “The only question is whether he’s here, too.”

  Then he turned left and drove on.

  Gerry was too weary to fight. The rain fell in her eyes and flowed like tears down her face. She thought this blurred view of the dark figure against a background of darkness might be the last thing she would see.

  “I was never far away,” he said.

  “Don’t do this,” Gerry said, dredging up all the energy she could to even speak. “Please. There’s no point. It’s over now. The police will be here any moment.”

  “Do you think I care about that?” He moved closed. “Once she’s gone, I’m finished anyway.”

  Gerry felt a small ray of hope that he meant he was only going to kill Maureen Tindall, and spare her. The surge of relief made her also feel guilty and ashamed, but she didn’t want to die, not like this, in the rain, covered in mud, at the hands of a mass murderer, the man who had killed Katie Shea and her unborn child.

  Then she realized that what Vincent had said had merely been a figure of speech, and there was no way he was going to spare her. He had killed innocent people before, both in the army and at the wedding, and he would do it again with no compunction. Aunt Jane had told her as much.