In a Dry Season

by Peter Robinson

  “How old was she when she died?”

  “I’d have to do more comprehensive tests to be certain of that. With X-rays of the ossification centres—the centres that basically produce the calcium and other minerals that make up bone—we can make a reasonably accurate determination. We can also do a spectrographic analysis of bone particles. But all that takes time, not to mention money. I imagine you’d like a rough estimate as quickly as possible?”

  “Yes,” said Banks. “What do you have to go on at the moment?”

  “Well, there’s epiphyseal union, for a start. Let me explain,” he looked over towards Annie like a professor beginning his lecture. She ignored him. He seemed unper-turbed. Maybe this sort of ogling was just a habit with him, Banks guessed, and he didn’t even notice he was doing it. “Here,” Dr Williams went on, “at the very ends of the long bones in both the arms and the legs, the epiphyses have all firmly united with the shafts, which doesn’t usually happen until the age of twenty or twenty-one. But look here.” He pointed towards the collar-bone. “The epiphyses at the sternal end of the clavicle, which doesn’t unite until the late twenties, has not united yet.”

  “So what age are we looking at? Roughly?”

  Williams scratched his chin. “I’d say about twenty-two to twenty-eight. If you take in the skull sutures, too, you can see here that the sagittal suture shows some signs of endocranial closure, but the occipital and the lambdoid sutures are still wide open. That would also suggest somewhere in the twenties.”

  “How accurate is this?”

  “It wouldn’t be very far off. I mean, this is definitely not the skeleton of a forty-year-old or a fourteen-year-old. You can also take into account that she was in pretty good general physical shape. There is no indication of any old healed fractures, nor of any skeletal anomalies or deformities.”

  Banks looked at the bones, trying to imagine the young woman who had once inhabited them, the living flesh surrounding them. He failed. “Any idea how long she’s been down there?”

  “Oh dear. I was wondering when you’d get around to asking that.” Williams folded his arms and placed his forefinger over his lips. “It’s very difficult. Very difficult indeed to be at all accurate about something like that. To the untrained eye, a skeleton that has been buried for ten years might look indistinguishable from one that has been buried, say, a thousand years.”

  “But you don’t think this one has been buried a thousand years?”

  “Oh, no. I said to the untrained eye. No, there are certain indications that we’re dealing with recent remains here, as opposed to archaeological.”

  “These being?”

  “What do you notice most about the bones?”

  “The colour,” said Banks.

  “Right. And what does that tell you?”

  Banks wasn’t too sure about the usefulness of the Socratic method at a time like this, but he had found from experience that it is usually a good idea to humour scientists. “That they’re stained or decayed.”

  “Good. Good. Actually, the discoloration is an indication that they have taken on some of the colour of the surrounding earth. Then there’s this. Have you noticed?” He pointed to several places on the bone surfaces where the exterior seemed to be flaking off like old paint.

  “I thought that was just the crusting,” Banks said. “No. Actually, the bone surface is crumbling, or flaking. Now if you take all this into account, along with the complete absence of any soft or ligamentous tissue, then I’d estimate it’s been down there for a few decades. Certainly more than ten years, and as we already know it’s unlikely she was buried after 1953, I’d go back about ten years from there.”

  “Nineteen forty-three?”

  “Hold on. This is a very rough guess. The rate of skele-tal decay is wildly unpredictable. Obviously, your odontologist will be able to tell you a bit more, narrow things down, perhaps.”

  “Is there anything else you can do to get a little closer to the year of death?”

  “I’ll do my best, of course, but it could take some time.

  There are a number of tests I can carry out on the bones, tests we use in cases of relatively recent remains as opposed to archaeological finds. There’s carbonate testing, I can do an ultraviolet fluorescence test, histologic determination and Uhlenhut reaction. But even they’re not totally accurate. Not within the kind of time-frame you’re asking for. They might tell you, at a pinch, that the bones are either under or over fifty years old, but you seem to want year, month, date and time. The best you can realistically hope for is between thirty and fifty or fifty and a hundred. I don’t want to appear to be telling you your job, but probably your best chance of finding out who she was and when she was killed is by checking old missing-persons files.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Banks.

  “Anyway, I’ll need more information about soil, mineral content, bacterial content, temperature fluctuations and various other factors. Buried under an outbuilding floor, then flooded under a reservoir, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ll visit the site first thing in the morning and take some samples, then I’ll get working on the tests.” He looked at Annie. “Perhaps DS Cabbot here would be willing to escort me there?”

  “Sorry.” said Annie, “Far too busy.”

  His eyes lingered on her. “Pity.”

  “Visiting the site’s no problem,” Banks said. “I’ll arrange for a car and make sure the SOCOS are expecting you. Look, we’re already a bit suspicious from the way and the place the body was buried. I know you don’t have a lot to go on, but can you tell us anything at all about cause of death?”

  “I think I can help you a little with that, though it’s not really my area of expertise, and you should definitely get your Home Office pathologist to confirm this.”

  “Of course. We’ll ask Dr Glendenning to have a look as soon as he can. I doubt that it’ll be top of his list, though. What have you found to be going on with?”

  “See those markings on the bones there?” Dr Williams pointed to several of the ribs and the pelvic area. As Banks looked more closely, he noticed a number of triangular notches. They weren’t easy to spot because of the flaking and crusting, but once he saw them he knew he’d seen them before on bones.

  “Stab wounds,” he muttered.

  “Exactly.”

  “Cause of death?” Banks leaned over and peered.

  “I’d say so. See those little curls of bone there, like wood-shavings?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re still attached to the bone, and that only happens with living bone. Also, there’s no sign of healing, is there? If she’d remained alive after these injuries, the bones would have healed to some extent, starting about ten days after the injury. So, technically, she could have been stabbed anywhere from one to ten days before she died of something else. But, as I said, it’s unlikely. Especially since the position of some of these wounds indicates the blade would most certainly have pierced vital organs. In fact, I’d conclude that she was stabbed quite viciously, more than once, almost certainly causing death. But please don’t quote me on that.”

  Banks looked at Annie Cabbot. “Murder, then,” she said.

  “Well, I’d hardly imagine the poor woman did it herself,” Williams agreed. “Yes, unless I’m very much mistaken, it looks like you’ve definitely got yourselves a murder victim here.”

  Four

  Annie drove up Long Hill the following morning to interview Mrs Ruby Kettering. It was another scorcher, she noted, rolling her window down. Devil-may-care this morning, she had decided not to bother wearing tights. They were damned uncomfortable in the heat. You’d certainly never catch men wearing anything quite so ridiculous.

  Long Hill began at the village green and linked Harkside to the edge of Harksmere Reservoir. Close to the centre of the village, it was the busiest shopping street, with a jumbled mix of shops and pubs, and most of the public buildings, including the
borough council offices, the library, the Women’s Institute and the Mechanics Institute.

  It was early for tourists, but the shops were open and the locals were doing the rounds, shopping bags hooked over their arms, standing gossiping in little knots along the pavement. The road was narrow and double yellow lines ran along each side. Towards the end, the buildings dwindled and finally gave way to half a mile of open countryside before the T-junction with The Edge.

  Annie parked on the grass verge opposite the junction. From there, she could see the ruins of Hobb’s End in the distance. Several tiny figures stood clustered around the outbuilding where the skeleton had been discovered, and Annie realized it must be the SOCO team still searching the area. She wondered if Dr Williams, the skeleton-groper, was there, too.

  Annie crossed the road and opened the gate. Mrs Kettering was squatting in the garden spraying her dahlias. She looked up. Annie introduced herself.

  “I know who you are,” the old lady said, placing her hands on her thighs and pushing herself to her feet. “I remember you. You’re that nice policewoman who found my Joey.”

  Annie accepted the compliment with a brief nod. She hadn’t actually found Joey herself. The budgie had been innocently standing on the village green, accepting the crumbs an old man was scattering, blissfully unaware that it was being watched by a gang of sparrows up in one of the trees and by a ginger tom lurking behind a bush not more than ten yards away. One of the local kids had noticed, though, and remembering the poster offering a five-pound reward for a missing budgie, he had carefully scooped up Joey and carried him to the police station. Annie had simply delivered Joey back safely into Mrs Kettering’s hands. One of the many exciting jobs she had done since arriving in Harkside. It was, however, through this incident that Annie had received her first on-the-job injury. Joey pecked the base of her thumb and drew blood, but Inspector Harmond wouldn’t accept her injury compensation claim.

  Mrs Kettering was wearing a straw hat, a loose yellow smock and baggy white shorts down to her knees. Below them, her legs were pale as lard, mottled red and marbled with varicose veins. On her feet she wore a pair of black plimsolls without laces. Though a little stooped, she looked sturdy enough for her age.

  “Oh dear,” she said, wiping the streaks of sweat and soil from her brow with her forearm. “I hope you haven’t come to arrest me. Has someone reported me?”

  “Reported you? What for?” Annie asked.

  Mrs Kettering glanced guiltily at the hose-pipe coiled near the front door. “I know there’s supposed to be a water shortage, but I can’t just let my garden die. A garden needs a lot of watering when the weather’s like this. I don’t own a car, so I don’t waste any on washing one, and I thought, well, if I used just a little . . . ?”

  Annie smiled. She hadn’t washed her car in weeks, either, but that had nothing to do with the water shortage. “Don’t worry, Mrs Kettering,” she said with a wink, “I won’t report you to Yorkshire Water.”

  Mrs Kettering sighed and put a gnarled, veiny hand to her heart. “Oh, thank you, dear,” she said. “Do you know, I don’t think I could stand going to jail at my age. I’ve heard that the food in there is absolutely terrible. And with my stomach . . . Anyway, please call me Ruby. What can I do for you?”

  “It’s about Hobb’s End.”

  “Hobb’s End?”

  “Yes. I understand you used to live there.”

  Mrs Kettering nodded. “Seven years Reg and me lived there—1933 to 1940. It was our first home together, just after we got married.”

  “You didn’t stay there till the end of the war?”

  “Oh, no. My Reg went off to fight—he was in the navy—and I went to work at a munitions factory near She-ffield. I lived with my sister in Mexborough during the war.

  When Reg came back in 1945, we stayed on there for a while, then he got a job on a farm just outside Harkside, so we moved here. We always did like the country. Listen, dear, would you like a cold drink? Lemonade perhaps?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m afraid there’s not much shelter from the sun,” Mrs Kettering said, “but we can sit over there.”

  She pointed to the side of the garden that abutted Long Hill. A short path led to a flagstone patio where two red-and-green-striped deck-chairs sat, half in the sun and half out of it. Various creeping plants coiled around the trellises fixed to the wall, providing a little shade.

  “That’ll be just fine,” Annie said, walking over and taking off her sunglasses.

  Mrs Kettering disappeared inside the house. Annie settled herself into one of the deck-chairs, stretched out her legs and luxuriated. She could feel the heat on her bare shins, warm and sensuous as a lover’s caress. The sensation took her back to the beach at St Ives, where she had grown up and spent many a summer’s day with her father, whose job it had been to rent out deck-chairs to the holiday-makers. The memory of those summers took her back to Rob, too: his days off, when they used to go for walks along the cliff-tops, sail around the headland in his small boat and make love in secluded coves as the sunset colours embla-zoned the horizon and waves crashed on the beach. How romantic it had all been, and how long ago it seemed.

  Annie inhaled the sweet scent of the flowers. Bees droned around her, gathering pollen. She opened her eyes again and saw gulls circling over Harksmere Reservoir.

  “Here we are, dear,” said Mrs Kettering, coming back out with a tray. First she offered a tall glass to Annie, then she took the other for herself, set the tray aside and sat down. The deck-chairs faced each other at an angle so it was easy to talk without straining one’s neck.

  “Hobb’s End,” Mrs Kettering said. “That takes me back. I can’t say I’ve really given the place much thought in years, though I can see it from the bottom of the garden now, of course. What do you want to know?”

  “As much as you can tell me,” Annie said. Then she told Mrs Kettering about the skeleton.

  “Yes, I saw something about that on the news. I’d been wondering who all the people were, coming and going.” Mrs Kettering thought for a moment. Annie watched her and sipped lemonade. A robin lit down on the lawn for a few seconds, cocked an eye at them, shat on the grass and took off again.

  “A young woman, about five foot two, with a baby?” Mrs Kettering repeated, brow knotted in concentration. “Well, there was the McSorley lass, but that was when we arrived. I mean, she’d have been well over thirty by the time we left, and she had three children by then. No, dear, I can’t honestly say anyone comes to mind. The far cottage, you say, the one by the fairy bridge?”

  “Fairy bridge?”

  “That’s what we used to call it. Because it was so small only fairies could cross over it.”

  “I see. That’s right. Under the outbuilding.”

  Mrs Kettering pulled a face. “Reg and me lived at the far end, just down from the mill. Still, I must have passed the place a hundred times or more. Sorry, love, it’s a blank. I certainly don’t remember any young woman living there.”

  “Never mind,” said Annie. “What can you tell me about the village itself?”

  “Well, however close to Harkside it was, it had its own distinct identity, I can tell you that for a start. Harksiders looked down on the Hobb’s End people because it was a mill village. Thought they were a cut above us.” She shrugged. “Still, I suppose everyone’s got to have someone to look down on, don’t they?”

  “Do you remember any doctors and dentists who used to practise there?”

  “Oh, yes. Dr Granville was the village dentist. Terrible man. He drank. And if I remember correctly there were two doctors. Ours was Dr Nuttall. Very gentle touch.”

  “Do you know what happened to his practice? I’m assuming he’s dead now?”

  “Oh, long since, I should imagine. And Granville was probably pushing sixty when the war started, too. You’ll be after medical and dental records, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  “I doubt you’ll have much l
uck there, love, not after all this time.”

  “Probably not. What other sorts of people lived in the village?”

  “All sorts, really. Let me see. We had shopkeepers, milkmen, publicans—we had three village pubs—farm labourers, drystone wallers, van drivers, travelling salesmen of one sort or another, a number of retired people, colonels and the like. Teachers, of course. A proper Agatha Christie sort of village it was. We even had our very own famous artist. Well, not exactly Constable or Turner, you understand, and he’s not very fashionable these days. Come with me a minute.”

  She struggled out of her deck-chair and Annie followed her into the house. It was hot inside and Annie felt the sweat trickle down the tendons at the backs of her ears. It itched. She was glad she wasn’t wearing tights.

  Because of the sudden contrast between bright sunlight and dim interior, she couldn’t make out the furnishings at first, except that they seemed old-fashioned: a rocking-chair, a grandfather clock, a glass-fronted china cabinet full of crystalware. The room into which Mrs Kettering led her smelled of lemon-scented furniture polish.

  They came to a halt in front of the dark wood mantelpiece, and Mrs Kettering pointed to the large water-colour that hung over it. “That’s one of his,” she said. “He gave it me as a going-away present. Don’t ask me why, but he took a bit of a shine to me. Maybe because I wasn’t a bad-looking lass in my time. Bit of a rogue, our Mr Stanhope, if truth be told. Most artists are. But a fine painter. You can see for yourself.”

  Annie’s eyes had adjusted to the light, and she was able to take in Stanhope’s painting. She had a passion for art, inherited from her father. She smiled to herself at Mrs Kettering’s remark. “Bit of a rogue.” Yes, she supposed that fit her father, too. Annie also painted as a hobby, so she was intrigued to look upon the work of Hobb’s End’s neglected genius.

  “Is that Hobb’s End before the war?”