All the colours of darkn.., p.1
All the Colours of Darkness, page 1
part #18 of Inspector Alan Banks Series
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Acknowledgements
Other Inspector Banks Novels by Peter Robinson
Also by Peter Robinson
Copyright
To Dad and Averil
Although the world is full of suffering,
it is also full of the overcoming of it.
– Helen Keller
For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In complement extern, ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at; I am not what I am.
– William Shakespeare, Othello
The poison is working!
– Puccini, Tosca
1
Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot thought it was a great shame that she had to spend one of the most beautiful days of the year so far at a crime scene, especially a hanging. She hated hangings. And on a Friday afternoon, too.
Annie had been dispatched, along with Detective Sergeant Winsome Jackman, to Hindswell Woods, just south of Eastvale Castle, where some schoolboys spending the last day of their half-term holiday splashing in the River Swain had phoned to say they thought they had seen a body.
The river ran swift, broad and shallow here, the colour of freshly pumped beer, frothing around the mossy stones. Along the riverside footpath, the trees were mostly ash, alder and wych-elm, their leaves a pale, almost translucent green, trembling in the faint breeze. The scent of wild garlic filled the air, clusters of midges hovered over the water, and on the other side the meadows were full of buttercups, pignut and cranesbill. Tewits twittered and flitted back and forth, nervous about people encroaching on their ground nests. A few fluffy clouds drifted across the sky.
Four schoolboys, all aged about ten or eleven, sat hunched on the boulders by the water, draped in towels or damp T-shirts, strips of pale skin, white as tripe, exposed here and there, all the spirit crushed out of their joyous play. They’d told the police that one of them had chased another off the path into the woods above the river, and they had stumbled upon a body hanging from one of the few oaks that still grew there. They had mobiles, so one of them dialled 999 and they waited by the riverside. When the police patrol officers and the ambulance crew arrived and took a look at the body, they agreed there was nothing they could do, so they stayed well back and radioed for the heavy brigade. Now it was Annie’s job to assess the situation and decide on what action should be taken.
Annie left Winsome to take statements from the kids and followed the patrol officer up the slope into the woods. Through the trees to her left, she could see the ruins of Eastvale Castle high on its hill. Before long, just over the rise, she caught a glimpse of a figure hanging from a length of yellow clothesline on a low bough ahead of her, its feet about eighteen inches off the ground. It made a striking contrast to the light green of the woods because it – Annie couldn’t tell yet whether the shape was a man or a woman – was dressed in an orange shirt and black trousers.
The tree was an old oak with a gnarled, thick trunk and knotty branches, and it stood alone in a small copse. Annie had noticed it before on her walks through the woods, where there were so few oaks that it stood out. She had even made a sketch or two of the scene but had never translated them into a fully fledged painting.
The uniformed officers had taped off the area around the tree, into which entry would be severely restricted. “You checked for any signs of life, I assume?” Annie asked the young constable making his way through the undergrowth beside her.
“The paramedic did, ma’am,” he answered. “As best he could without disturbing the scene.” He paused. “But you don’t have to get that close to see that he’s dead.”
A man, then. Annie ducked under the police tape and inched forward. Twigs snapped under her feet and last autumn’s leaves crackled. She didn’t want to get so close that she might destroy or contaminate any important trace evidence, but she needed a clearer idea of what she was dealing with. As she stopped about ten feet away, she could hear a golden plover whistling somewhere near by. Farther up, towards the moorland, a curlew piped its mournful call. Closer by, Annie was aware of the officer panting behind her after their trot up the hill, and of the lightest of breezes soughing through leaves too fresh and moist to rustle.
Then there was the absolute stillness of the body.
Annie could see for herself that he was a man now. His head was closely shaved, and what hair remained had been dyed blond. He wasn’t twisting at the end of the rope, the way corpses do in movies, but hanging heavy and silent as a rock from the taut yellow clothesline, which had almost buried itself in the livid skin of his neck, now an inch or two longer than it had originally been. His lips and ears were tinged blue with cyanosis. Burst capillaries dotted his bulging eyes, making them appear red from where Annie was standing. She guessed his age at somewhere between forty and forty-five, but it was only a rough estimate. His fingernails were bitten or cut short, and she saw the cyanosis there, too. He also seemed to have a lot of blood on him for a hanging victim.
Most hangings were suicides, Annie knew, not murders, for the obvious reason that it was very difficult to hang a man while he was still alive and kicking. Unless it was the work of a lynch mob, of course, or he had been drugged first.
If it was a suicide, why had the victim chosen this particular place to end his life? Annie wondered. This tree? Did it have strong personal associations for him or had it simply been convenient? Had he ever realized that children might find him, and what effect seeing his body might have on them? Probably not, she guessed. When you’re that close to ending it all, you don’t think much about others. Suicide is the ultimate act of selfishness.
Annie knew she needed the Scenes of Crime Officers here as soon as possible. It was a suspicious death, and she would be far better off pulling out all the stops than jumping to the conclusion that nothing much need be done. She took out her mobile and rang Stefan Nowak, the Crime Scene Manager, who told her to wait and said he’d organize his team. Next, she left a message for Detective Superintendent Catherine Gervaise, who was in a meeting at County HQ in Northallerton. It was too early to determine the level of investigation yet, but the super needed to know what was happening.
Then there was Banks – Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, her immediate boss – who would normally be Senior Investigating Officer on something as serious as this. Should she call him? He had taken off early for the weekend, driving down to London that morning to stay with his girlfriend. Annie couldn’t complain. Banks had plenty of time off due to him, and she herself had recently got back from a two-week stay with her father in St. Ives, mostly sketching and lounging around on the beach, convalescing and recharging after a traumatic period in her life.
In the end she decided that Banks could wait. It was time to get back to the river and see what Winsome had found out from the kids. Poor buggers, Annie thought as she tottered down the slope behind the patrol officer, arms out to keep her balance. On the other hand, kids were resilient, and when they got back to school on Monday morning, they’d have one hell of a story to tell their mates. She wondered whether English teachers still handed out “what I did on my holidays” assignments. If they did, they’d be in for a big surprise.
After the schoolchildren had been sent home to their parents and the uniformed officers had been sent to the car park across the river to see whether the victim had left his car there, Annie leaned against a tree in companionable silence with Winsome and watched the SOCOs, along with police surgeon Dr. Burns and crime scene photographer Peter Darby, work the scene in their disposable white oversuits. When they had finished photographing and examining the body in situ, they cut it down, careful to preserve the knot, and laid it on a stretcher the coroner’s officer supplied.
There was something unnatural about all that morbid activity on such a beautiful day, Annie thought, as if it were merely some sort of exercise or practice run. But a man was dead; that much she knew. Counting her blessings, she realized that they had managed to get this far without reporters or TV cameras showing up.
The kids hadn’t known much. About the only piece of interesting information Winsome had gleaned from them was that when they had first approached the shallows along the riverside path from Eastvale at about one o’clock, just after lunch, one of them had chased another up the slope and there had been no sign of the hanging man. It was 3:17 when the 999 call had been logged, which gave a window of just over two hours. With any luck, the SOCOs and Dr. Glendenning, the Home Office pathologist, would establish cause of death pretty quickly, and she wouldn’t have to watch her weekend go down the tubes as she had so many times in the past.
Not that she had any grandiose plans, only house-cleaning, washing, lunch with an old colleague from Harkside station on Saturday. But over the last couple of months, Annie had started taking more control of her life, and she valued her hours alone. She had c ut down on her drinking and started exercising more, even going so far as to join the Eastvale fitness centre. She also spent more time on yoga and meditation at home, and she was feeling so much the better for it all.
DI Stefan Nowak slipped off his face mask and goggles, ducked under the tape and walked towards Annie and Winsome over the stepping plates that now marked the common approach path to and from the scene. His pace was unhurried, but then it always was. Annie was glad that he had finally got his promotion to detective inspector and had been appointed Crime Scene Manager. Sometimes the invasion of police work by business terminology made her cynical – it seemed to be all managers, executives and vision statements these days – but she had to admit that a crime scene was a bit like a business in some ways, and it did have to be carefully managed.
Winsome whistled “Who Are You?”
Nowak rolled his eyes and ignored her. “You’re in luck,” he said.
“Suicide?”
“The post-mortem should verify our findings, but from what Dr. Burns and I saw, the only wound on his throat was that caused by the rope, and it was in exactly the place you’d expect it to be. Of course, there’s no saying he wasn’t poisoned first, and we’ll certainly ask for a full toxicology report, but there are no visible signs of serious physical trauma to the body other than those that can be related to the hanging. I take it Dr. Glendenning is back on the job?”
“Yes,” said Annie. “He’s back. What about all the blood, if that’s what it was?”
“It was. We’ve taken samples, of course. The only thing is…” Nowak frowned.
“Yes?”
“It could have come from the superficial scratches he got when he climbed the tree – we do have plenty of indication from the ground and the bark that he did that alone, by the way, without the help of a lynch mob – but there’s rather a lot more blood than I would expect from a few scratches. We can get typing done pretty quickly, even this weekend, but, as you know, DNA and tox screens take quite a bit longer.”
“Soon as you can,” Annie said. “The rope?”
“Cheap nylon washing line, the kind you can buy almost anywhere.”
“And the knot?”
“Perfectly consistent with the kind of knot a potential suicide might tie. Hardly a hangman’s knot. You wouldn’t even have to be a boy scout. It was on the left side, by the way, which indicates a left-handed person, and given that he was wearing his wristwatch on his right hand…I’d say all the indications we have here point to a suicide by hanging.”
“Any idea who he was, a name, address?”
“No,” said Nowak. “He didn’t have a wallet with him.”
“Keys?”
“No. It’s my guess that he drove out here and left them in his car, maybe in his jacket. He wouldn’t have had any further use for them, would he?”
“I suppose not,” said Annie. “We’ll have to find out who his next of kin is. Any signs of a suicide note?”
“Not on or near him, no. Again, it’s possible he left something in the car.”
“We’ll check when we find it. I’d also like to know what his movements were this afternoon. As far as we know, he killed himself some time between one and three. Suicide or not, there are a few gaps we have to try to fill in before we go home. Most of all, we need to know who he was.”
“That’s easy,” said one of the SOCOs, a civilian soil expert by the name of Tim Mallory.
Annie hadn’t noticed him come up behind them. “It is?” she asked.
“Sure. I don’t know his second name, but everyone called him Mark.”
“Everyone?”
“At the Eastvale Theatre. That’s where he worked. You know, the restored Georgian theatre on Market Street.”
“I know where you mean,” said Annie. For years the local amateur dramatic and operatic societies had put on their Terence Rattigans or Gilbert and Sullivans at the Community Centre and in various church halls around the Dale, but the Town Council, aided by an Arts Council lottery grant and private funding from local businesses, had recently restored an old Georgian theatre, which had been used as a carpet warehouse and then left in a state of disrepair for years. For the past year and a half, it had been the centre for all thespian endeavours in town, along with the occasional folk or chamber music concert. “Are you sure it’s him?” she asked.
“Certain,” said Mallory.
“What did he do there?”
“He had something to do with props and scenery, that sort of thing. Backstage stuff. The wife’s a member of the amateur operatic society,” Mallory added. “That’s how I know.”
“Know anything else about him?”
“Nah, not really.” Mallory flapped his wrist. “Except that he’s a bit flamboyant, you might say.”
“He’s gay?”
“He didn’t hide it. It’s pretty common knowledge around the place.”
“Know where he lived?”
“No, but one of the theatre crowd would.”
“Any family?”
“No idea.”
“I don’t suppose you know what kind of car he drives, do you?”
“Sorry.”
“OK. Thanks.” What Mallory and Nowak had told her should certainly make her job a lot easier. Now she was beginning to believe that she and Winsome might get home before dark. She nudged Winsome. “Come on, let’s get over to the theatre,” she said. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”
Just then a young PC came trotting up the path, out of breath. “Excuse me, ma’am, but we think we’ve found the car. Want to see it now?”
The car was a dark green Toyota, an even earlier model than Annie’s old purple Astra, and it had definitely seen better days. It stood in the tar macked parking area beside the caravan site, between the river and the main Swainsdale road. There were only three other cars in the car park, which was how the officers had found it so quickly. They couldn’t be certain it belonged to the victim yet, of course, but as soon as Annie saw the jack-in-a-box with its paint peeling off and the elephant’s-foot umbrella stand on the back seat, she immediately thought of theatrical props.
And the driver’s door was unlocked, the key in the ignition, which was what had drawn the attention of the uniformed officers. The inside was a mess, but it was only the kind of a mess a person makes in his or her own car, to which Annie could well attest. Maps, petrol receipts, sweet wrappers and CD cases littered the passenger seat. The CDs were mostly opera, Annie noticed, something Banks would have appreciated. In the back, along with the props, were a broken windscreen wiper, an unopened bag of pork scratchings and a roll of cling film. There was also a black zip-up windcheater.
Annie found the victim’s wallet in a side pocket of the windcheater, along with a set of keys. He had forty-five pounds in notes, credit and debit cards in the name of Mark G. Hardcastle, a couple of business cards of local cabinetmakers and theatrical suppliers, a driving licence complete with photograph and an address not far from the centre of town, along with a date of birth that put his age at forty-six. As far as Annie could see, there was no suicide note. She rifled through the wallet again, then went through the pile of stuff on the passenger seat and on the floor, under the seats. Nothing. Next she checked the boot and found only a large cardboard box full of old magazines and newspapers for recycling, a flat spare tire and a few plastic containers full of anti freeze and window-washing fluid.
Annie took a deep breath of fresh air.
“Anything?” Winsome asked.
“Do you think he just happened to be carrying a length of clothesline with him?”
“Unlikely,” Winsome answered. She jerked her head towards the car. “But just look at some of the other stuff he had in there. Who knows? Maybe it was a theatrical prop.”
“True enough. Anyway, I was thinking there might be a receipt. Obviously if he was planning to hang himself, and he didn’t have any rope conveniently stashed in his car, he’d have had to buy some, wouldn’t he? We’ll get Harry Potter to check the local shops. It shouldn’t be too difficult to trace.” Annie showed Winsome a handful of receipts from Hardcastle’s wallet. “Three of these are from London – Waterstone’s, HMV and a Zizzi’s restaurant. All dated this past Wednesday. There’s also a petrol receipt from an M1 service station at Watford Gap dated Thursday morning.”
