In a Dry Season

by Peter Robinson

  We handed our coats to the young airman, who was tall, slim and dark in complexion. He spoke with a lazy drawl and moved with agile, unhurried grace. He had brown eyes, short black hair and the whitest teeth I had ever seen.

  “Over here.” He led us to the far wall, beside the bar, where everyone’s coats hung. “They’ll be safe here, now don’t you ladies worry.” When he turned his back, Gloria looked at me and raised an eyebrow in approval.

  We followed him and held onto our handbags. It was always awkward knowing what to do with your handbag when you danced. Usually, you left it under the table, but Cynthia once had hers stolen at a dance in Harkside.

  “And now, ma’am,” he said, turning straight away to Gloria, “If I may have the pleasure of the first dance?”

  Gloria inclined her head slightly, passed her handbag to me, took his hand and went off. It didn’t take long before someone snapped up Cynthia, too, and I was holding three handbags. But, if I say so myself, a rather handsome young navigator from Hackensack, New Jersey, called Bernard—which he pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable—asked me to dance even before his friend asked Alice. I passed the three handbags to her and left her standing there gawping in a way that Marlene Dietrich never gawped.

  “First, you have to answer a question for me,” I said, before I let him lead, just to show I could be quite brave when I wanted to, though I was secretly scared to death of all these brash and handsome young men all around me.

  Bernard scratched his head. “What’s that, ma’am?”

  “What’s an ‘A’ train?”

  “Huh?”

  “The music that was playing when we came in. ‘Take the A Train.’ What’s an ‘A’ train? I’ve always wondered. Is it worse than a ‘B’ train, for example?”

  He grinned. “Well, no, ma’am. I mean, it’s just a subway train.”

  “Subway? You mean the underground?”

  “Yes, ma’am. In New York City. The ‘A’ train’s the subway that’s the fastest way to Harlem.”

  “Ah,” I said, the light finally dawning. “Well, I never. Okay, then, let’s dance.”

  After “Kalamazoo,” “Stardust” and “April in Paris,” we gathered at the bar and the tall airman who had taken our coats bought us all bourbon, which we took to the table. His name was Billy Joe Farrell. He hailed from Tennessee and worked on the ground crew. He introduced us to his friend Edgar Konig, whom everyone called PX, because on American bases PX meant the quartermaster’s stores, which was exactly what he ran.

  PX was a gangly young Iowan with a baby face and his fair hair shaved almost to his skull. He was tall, with Nordic cheekbones, pouting lips and the longest eyelashes over his cornflower-blue eyes. He was also very shy, far too shy to dance with any of us. He never quite made full eye contact with anyone. He was the sort of person who is always around but never really gets noticed, and I think the reason he was so generous with us all was simply that it made him feel needed.

  When I look back on that evening now, more than twenty-five years ago, especially considering all that has happened since, it seemed to go around in a whirl of dancing and talking and drinking, and it finished before it really began. I still remember the strange accents and the unfamiliar place-names and phrases we heard; the young faces; the suprisingly soft feel of a uniform under my palm; the biting, yet sweet, taste of bourbon; the kisses; whispered plans to meet again.

  As the four of us walked tipsily back through the woods, arms linked with our gallant escorts, little did we know how, before long, we’d be using words like “lousy,” “bum” and “creep” in our daily conversation, not to mention chewing gum and smoking Luckies. As we walked we sang “Shenandoah” and after good-night kisses agreed to meet them again in Harkside the following week.

  It was the first time Banks had been to the Queen’s Arms for lunch in some months. He had been trying to avoid boozing too much during the day, partly because it was sometimes hard to stop, and partly because it seemed too much a part of his old life.

  It wasn’t so much that he used to go there with Sandra frequently—though they often dropped in for a quick jar if they’d been in town together to see a film or a play—just that the Queen’s Arms brought back memories of the days when his life and work were in harmony: the days before Jimmy Riddle; the days when he had enjoyed long brainstorming sessions with Gristhorpe, Hatchley, Phil Richmond and Susan Gay over a steak and kidney pud and a pint of Theakston’s bitter; the days when Sandra had been happy with their marriage and with her work at the gallery.

  Or so he had believed.

  Like many things he had believed, it had all been an illusion, only true because he had been gullible enough to believe in it. In reality, it had all been as flimsy and fleeting as a optical illusion; it depended entirely on your point of view. In calendar time, perhaps, those days weren’t so long ago, but in his memory they sometimes seemed as if they had been dreamed by another person in another century.

  Even before he bought the cottage, in those days when he had been out on the booze in Eastvale nearly every night, he had avoided the Queen’s Arms. Instead, he had sought out modern, anonymous pubs tucked away on the estates, places where the regulars enjoyed their quiz trivia nights and their karaoke and paid no attention to the sad figure in the corner who bumped against the table a little harder each time he went for a piss.

  He got into a fight only once, with a paunchy loud-mouth who thought Banks was eyeballing his girlfriend, a pasty-faced scrubber with bad hair. It didn’t matter that Banks didn’t think she was worth fighting over, her boyfriend was ready to rock and roll. Luckily, Banks was never so pissed that he forgot the rules of bar-room brawling: get in first and get in nasty. While the boyfriend was still building up steam verbally, Banks punched him in the stomach and brought up his knee to connect with his nose. Blood, snot and vomit spattered his trousers. Everyone went quiet, and no one tried to stop him leaving.

  Today, he felt like indulging himself at the Queen’s Arms. Cyril, the landlord, welcomed him back like a long-lost friend, not remarking on his absence, and Glenys, Cyril’s wife, gave him her usual shy smile. He bought a pint and ordered a Yorkshire pudding filled with roast beef and onion gravy. The pub was busy with its usual lunch-time mix of tourists, local office workers and shopkeepers on their lunch breaks, but Banks managed to snag a small copper-topped table in the far corner, between the fireplace and the diamond-shaped amber and green window-panes.

  He had brought with him the folder DS Hatchley had just dropped on his desk: information gleaned from the central registry of births, marriages and deaths. With any luck, it would answer a number of his questions. Already that morning, he had phoned army records and asked about Matthew Shackleton’s service history. They said they would verify his identity and call him back. He knew from experience that the military didn’t like people snooping into their affairs, even the police, but he didn’t expect much trouble with this one; after all, Matthew Shackleton was long dead.

  From Hatchley’s notes, Banks learned first that Gloria was born on 17 September 1921, as she had correctly noted on the St Bartholomew’s register. Instead of simply giving “London” as her place of birth, the official record listed London Hospital, Mile End. Christ, Banks thought, that was in the thick of the East End, all right, and a real villain’s thoroughfare these days. It would certainly have made her a Cockney, an accent she had worked hard to lose, if Elizabeth Goodall were to be believed.

  Her father was Jack Stringer, whose illegible signature appeared in the “Signature, Residence and Description of Informant” column along with the Mile End address. Her mother’s name was Patricia McPhee. The father’s rank or profession was listed as “dock worker.” There was no column on the form to record the mother’s.

  Next, Hatchley had checked to see if Gloria’s parents had, indeed, been killed in the Blitz, and had pulled death certificates for the two of them, dated 15 September 1940, listing the same Mile End address a
nd “injuries sustained during bombing” as the cause of death.

  A series of black-and-white images passed through Banks’s mind: vast stretches of rubble and craters; acrid smoke drifting through the night air; children’s screams, flames licking soot-blackened walls; the screeching of the bombs before the shattering explosions; houses only half-destroyed, so you could see inside the rooms, the pathetic sticks of furniture, framed photographs askew on the walls, peeling wallpaper; families huddled together under blankets in underground stations, a few valued possessions with them.

  The images came mostly from films and documentaries he had seen on the Blitz. His parents had actually lived through it, moving to Peterborough from Hammersmith only after the war. They never spoke about it much, as most people who had been through it didn’t, but his mother had told him a comical story or two about the war days.

  Some of the images of the war’s devastation came from Banks’s own experience; when he was a child, even that long after the war. As he had told Annie, wastelands of rubble and half-destroyed buildings remained in some areas for years. He remembered visiting London as a child and being surprised when his father told him that the acres of flattened streets in the East End were there because of the war.

  Hatchley had been unable to find a death certificate for Gloria Kathleen Shackleton, but he did find one for Matthew, and the information on it caused Banks almost to choke on his beer.

  According to the death certificate, Matthew Shackleton died at Leeds General Infirmary on 14 March 1950, by his own hand. Cause of death was given as a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.” At the time, he was thirty-one years of age, of no occupation, living at an address in Bramley, Leeds. The informant of his death was listed as Gwynneth Vivian Shackleton, of the same address. Banks checked again, but Hatchley had made no mistake.

  He lit a cigarette and thought for a moment. Matthew Shackleton was supposed to have died in Burma, but obviously he hadn’t. Of the three survivors of the old Hobb’s End days that Banks and Annie had talked to over the past few days, one had left the village in 1940, before Gloria’s arrival there, the second had gone in May, 1944, and the third at Christmas 1944. Neither Elizabeth Goodall nor Alice Poole had mentioned Matthew Shackleton’s returning, so he must have come back after they had left.

  Which made him a definite suspect in his wife’s murder. Again.

  What had he come home to?

  And why had he killed himself five years later?

  Banks flipped the sheet and carried on reading. A marriage certificate existed for Gwynneth Vivian Shackleton and Ronald Maurice Bingham. They married at Christ Church, Hampstead, on 21 August 1954. The groom’s profession was listed as “Civil Servant.” Ronald died of liver cancer at home on 5 July 1967.

  There was no death certificate for Gwynneth. Hatchley had dug even deeper, and he had also discovered that there was a record of a child being born to Gloria Kathleen Stringer at her parents’ home address in Mile End, London, on 5 November 1937, shortly after her sixteenth birthday.

  The 5th of November. Guy Fawkes Night.

  Banks imagined Gloria struggling to give birth as catherine wheels spun and jumping crackers and bangers exploded outside in the street, as volcanoes erupted dark red fire, changing to green, then white, and rockets burst into showers of bright colours in the darkness beyond the bedroom windows. Did she look out on the scene from her pain? Did the noise and colours take her mind off what she was going through?

  The boy was christened Francis Paul Henderson, taking his father’s surname. George Henderson, like Jack Shackleton, was listed as “dock worker.”

  There was no trace of a wedding certificate.

  So Gloria had given birth more than three years before she turned up in Hobb’s End. What had become of the child and its father? Had she turned over the boy’s care completely to George Henderson? It looked that way. She had certainly indicated to none of her new friends that she had a son. Was George Henderson the man with the boy who had turned up at Bridge Cottage during the war? The one Gloria had argued with?

  Glenys brought over Banks’s Yorkie. He tucked into the huge, stuffed Yorkshire pudding and washed each mouthful down with a sip of Theakston’s.

  According to Hatchley’s final search, George Henderson had died of a heart attack just five months ago. There was no death or marriage certificate for his son, Francis. That made three of them unaccounted for by death certificates. Gloria, in all likelihood, had been buried under the outbuilding, but that still left Gwynneth Shackleton and Francis Henderson. Why hadn’t they come forward? One possibility was that they might both be dead, though Gwynneth would be around seventy and Francis only around sixty, hardly old in this day and age. Another possibility was that neither of them knew what was going on, which was too much of a coincidence for Banks to swallow. There again, maybe they had something to hide. But what?

  Francis wouldn’t be able to tell Banks much. Everything that happened in Hobb’s End happened before he turned eight, so he was hardly a suspect in the murder of Gloria Shackleton. He would have been about sixteen when the village was flooded to make Thornfield Reservoir, and Banks doubted that the event would have meant anything to him. After all, he had only been there once, as a child, if indeed he was the boy that Alice Poole had seen.

  Nonetheless, it would be interesting to know what had become of him. If nothing else, Francis Henderson’s DNA could help determine beyond a shadow of a doubt whether the skeleton really was Gloria Shackleton’s.

  There was another issue, too: someone had to lay Gloria’s body to rest, bury her properly, in a churchyard this time. Two people who had been intimately involved with her were possibly still alive: her sister-in-law, Gwynneth, and her son, Francis Henderson. They should be the ones to do it, to bury their dead.

  Banks sighed, put the files back in his briefcase and walked through the crowds across Market Street. He found a message waiting at the front desk from army personnel, informing him that Matthew Shackleton had been listed as “missing, presumed dead” in 1943, and that was all they had on him. Curiouser and curiouser. Back in his office, Banks picked up the phone and called Detective Inspector Ken Blackstone at Millgarth station, in Leeds.

  “Alan,” said Blackstone. “Long time no see.”

  There was a coolness and distance in his voice. They hadn’t been in touch often over the past year or so, and Banks realized he had probably alienated Ken along with just about everyone else who had tried to be his friend during the dark days. Ken had left a number of messages on his answering machine suggesting they get together and talk, but Banks had responded to none of them. He didn’t feel like explaining how he just hadn’t been able to handle people offering help and encouragement, feeling sorry for him, how he was managing to feel quite sorry enough for himself, thank you very much, and how he had preferred to seek anonymity among the crowds instead. “You know how it is,” he said.

  “Sure. So what can I do for you? Don’t tell me this is just a social call.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I thought not.” There was a slight pause, then Black-stone’s tone softened a little. “Any new developments between you and Sandra?”

  “Nothing. Except I’ve heard she’s seeing someone.”

  “I’m sorry, Alan.”

  “These things happen.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve been there.”

  “Then you should understand.”

  “I do. Want to get rat-arsed and talk about it some-time?”

  Banks laughed. “It’ll be a pleasure.”

  “Good. So, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, if this little idea works out, we might have that piss-up quicker than you think. I’m looking for the details of a suicide. Leeds. Bramley. Gunshot wound. Name’s Matthew Shackleton. Died 14 March 1950. The local cop-shop should have some sort of record, especially as there was a firearm involved.”

  “Is there an explanation in here somewhere?”

  “L
ong story, Ken. By the way, have you ever heard any-thing on the grapevine about a DS called Cabbot? Annie Cabbot?”

  “Can’t say as I have. But then I’ve not exactly been around the grapevine much for the past while. Why do you want to know? All right, I know, don’t bother, another long story, right? Look, about this suicide. It could take a while.”

  “You mean you’re talking minutes instead of seconds?” Blackstone laughed. “Hours instead of minutes, more like. I’ll get DC Collins to make some phone calls—if I can drag him away from his paper. I’ll call you back later.”

  Banks heard a grunt and the rustle of a newspaper in the background. “Thanks, Ken,” he said. “Appreciate it.”

  “You’d better. You owe me a curry.”

  “You’re on.”

  “And Alan . . . ?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know some of what you’ve been going through, but don’t be a stranger.”

  “I know, I know. I told you, you’re on. Curry and piss-up and talk about girls. Just like a couple of teenagers. Soon as you get the info.”

  Blackstone chuckled. “Okay. Talk to you later.”

  Billy Joe and Gloria soon became a couple. Billy Joe was seen going alone to Bridge Cottage, and that got the village tongues wagging. Especially when PX was seen coming and going there the next day. He, too, seemed to have taken a shy sort of shine to Gloria, happy to be her slave and get for her whatever her heart desired. I suggested Gloria tell them to use the back door, where they couldn’t be seen from High Street, but she just laughed and shrugged it off.

  There was no real mystery to the visits. Gloria told me she wanted sex and she had chosen Billy Joe to supply it. She said he was good at it. I still didn’t understand what it was all about. When I asked her if I had to be in love before I let men take liberties with me, she lapsed into one her mysterious silences, then said, “There’s love, Gwen, and then there’s sex. They don’t have to be the same. Especially not these days. Not while there’s a war on. Just try not to get them mixed up.” Then she smiled. “But it’s always nice to be a little bit in love.” After this, I was more confused than ever, but I let the subject drop.