The Hanging Valley (10 page)

There had been a great deal of development in the area, and one or two very colourful red-and-gold barges stood moored by the waterside. But the river and canal banks were still very much of a wasteland: overgrown with weeds, littered with the tires and old prams people had dumped there.

Many of the huge Victorian warehouses still hung on, crumbling and broken-windowed, their red brick blackened by the industrial smoke of a hundred years or more. It was a little like Thameside, Banks thought, where old wharfs and warehouses, like the warrens where Fagin had run his band of child-thieves, were daily being converted into luxury apartment complexes, artists’ studios and office space. Because Leeds was in the depressed and abandoned north, though, the process of regeneration would probably take quite a bit longer, if indeed it ever happened at all.

Skilfully manoeuvring the lanes of traffic and a huge roundabout, Banks managed to get on Armley Road. Soon he was at the bottom of Town Street, where the road swung right, past the park, to Bramley and Stanningley. He turned left up Crab Lane, a narrow, winding one-way street by a small housing estate built on a hill, and parked on the street near the library.

Banks soon found Esther Haines’s house. It had a blue door, freshly painted by the look of it. In the garden was an overturned plastic tricycle, green with thick yellow wheels.

Banks pressed the bell and a thin-faced woman answered. She was perhaps in her late twenties, but she seemed haggard and tired. Judging from the noise inside the house, Banks guessed that the cares of motherhood had worn her down. She frowned at him and he showed her his identification card. Immediately, she turned pale and invited him in. For people on estates like this, Banks realized, a visit from the police always
means bad news. He felt his stomach muscles tighten as he walked inside.

In the living-room, cluttered with children’s toys, Mrs Haines had already sat down. Hands clasped in her lap, she perched at the edge of her seat on the sofa. A dark-haired man came through from the kitchen, and she introduced him as her husband, Les. He was wearing only vest and pants. His shoulders and chest were matted with thick black hair, and he had a tattoo of a butterfly on his right bicep.

“We were just having our tea,” Esther Haines said. “Les is on the night shift at the yeast factory.”

“Aye,” her husband said, pulling up a chair and facing Banks aggressively. “What’s all this about?”

A child with jam smeared all over his pale grinning face crawled through the open kitchen door and busied himself trying to tear apart a fluffy toy dog.

“I’m sorry,” Banks said, “but I’ve got some bad news for you.” And the rest followed as it always did: disbelief, denial, shock, tears and, finally, a kind of numb acceptance. Banks was relieved to see that the first thing Mr Haines did was light a cigarette. He followed suit. Esther clutched a handkerchief to her nose. Her husband went to make tea and took the child with him.

After Mr Haines had brought in the teapot and cups, leaving the child to play in the kitchen, Banks leaned forward in his seat and said to Esther, “There are some questions I’ve got to ask.”

She nodded. “Are you sure?” she said. “Are you sure it’s our Bernie?”

“As sure as we can be at this point,” Banks told her. He didn’t want to have to tell her what state her brother’s corpse had been in. “Your answers will help us a lot. When did you last see him?”

“It was a couple of weeks ago, now,” she said. “He stayed with us a week.”

“Can you find out the exact date he left here, Mrs Haines? It’s important.”

Her husband walked over to a calendar of Canadian scenes and ran a stubby finger along the squares. “It was the thirteenth,” he said, then looked over at Esther: “Remember, love, that morning he went to the dentist’s for that filling he needed?”

Mrs Haines nodded.

“Did he leave immediately after his visit to Dr Jarrett’s?”

“Yes,” said Les Haines. “He was heading for the Dales, so he had to be off about eleven. He was after taking one of them trains on the Settle–Carlisle route.”

“And that was the last time either of you saw him, at eleven o’clock on May thirteenth?”

They both nodded.

“Do you know where he was headed?”

“Of course,” Esther said. “He were off back to Swainshead.”

“Going back? I don’t understand. Is that where he was before he came to stay with you?”

“No, it’s where he grew up, it’s where we used to live.”

Now Banks remembered where he’d heard the name before.

Allen. Nicholas Collier had directed Gristhorpe and himself to the ruins of Archie Allen’s old farmhouse high on the side of Swainshead Fell.

“Is your father Archie Allen?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And you lived on the fell-side, worked a farm?”

“Until it went belly-up,” Mr Haines cut in.

“Did you live there too?” Banks asked him.

“Me? No. Leeds born and bred. But the missis grew up there.”

“How long ago was this, Mrs Haines?” Banks asked Esther, who had started weeping quietly again.

“It’s ten years since we moved, now.”

“And you came straight here?”

“Not until Les and I got married. We lived in an old back-to-back off Tong Road. It’s not far away. Dad got a job at Blakey’s Castings. It were all he could get. Then they went to Melbourne— Australia, like—to go live with our Denny after they retired. Oh God, somebody’ll have to tell Mum and Dad.” She looked beseechingly at her husband, who patted her arm. “Don’t worry about that, love,” he said. “It’ll keep a while.”

“As far as I can gather,” Banks said when Mrs Haines had regained her composure, “your brother had some connection with Toronto, in Canada. Is that right?”
She nodded. “He couldn’t get a job over here. He was a bright lad, our Bernie. Got a degree. But there was no jobs. He emigrated eight years ago.”

“What did he do in Toronto?”

“He’s a teacher in a college. Teaching English. It’s a good job.

We was off out to see him next year.”

Banks lit another cigarette as she wiped away the tears and blew her nose.

“Can you give me his address?”

She nodded and said, “Be a love, Les.” Her husband went to the sideboard and brought out a tattered Woolworth’s address book.

“How often did Bernard come home?” Banks asked, writing down the Toronto address.

“Well, he came as often as he could. This was his third trip, but he hadn’t been for four years. Proper homesick he was.”

“Why did he stay in Canada, then?”

She shrugged. “Money. No work for him here, is there? Not with Thatcher running the country.”

“What did he talk about while he was with you?”

“Nothing really. Just family things.”

“Did he say anything odd to you, Mr Haines? Anything that struck you as unusual?”

“No. We didn’t talk a lot. We’d not much in common really. I’m not a great reader, never did well at school. And he liked his books, did Bernie. We talked about ale a bit. About what the boozers are like over there. He told me he’d found a nice pub in Toronto where he could get John Smith’s and Tartan on draught.”

“Is that all?”

Haines shrugged. “Like I said, we didn’t have much in common.” Banks turned to Mrs Haines again. “What state of mind was he in? Was he upset about anything, depressed?”

“He’d just got divorced about a year ago,” she said, “and he were a bit upset about that. I think that’s what made him homesick. But I wouldn’t say he were really depressed, no. He seemed to think he might be able to come back and live here again before too long.”

“Did he say anything about a job?”

“No.”

“How could he manage to move back here then?”

Esther Haines shook her head. “I don’t know. He didn’t say. He just hinted. Maybe it were wishful thinking, like, now he didn’t have Barbara any more.”

“That was his wife?”

“Yes.”

“What happened between them?”

“She ran off wi’ another man.”

“Where had Bernie been before he visited you?”

Esther took a deep breath and dabbed at her red eyes. “He’d come to England for a month, all told,” she said. “First off, he spent a week seeing friends in London and Bristol, then he came up here. He’d be due to go back about now, wouldn’t he, Les?”

“Do you know how to get in touch with these friends?” Banks asked.

She shook her head. “Sorry. They were friends of Bernie’s from university.”

“Which university?”

“York.”

“And you didn’t know them?”

“No. They’d be in his notebook. He always carried a notebook full of names and stuff.”

“We didn’t find it. Never mind, we’ll find them somehow.” If necessary, Banks knew he could check with the university authorities and track down Bernard Allen’s contemporaries. “Do you know where he was heading after Swainshead?”

“He were going to see another friend in Edinburgh, then fly back from Prestwick. You can do that with Wardair, he said, fly to London and go back from somewhere else.” She put her handkerchief to her nose again and sniffed.

“I don’t suppose you have this person’s address in Edinburgh?” She shook her head.

“So,” Banks said, stubbing out his cigarette and reaching for the tea, “he left here on May thirteenth to do some fell-walking in the Dales, and then—”

Mrs Haines cut in. “No, that’s not right. That’s not the reason he went.”

“Why did he go, then? Sentimental reasons?”

“Partly, I suppose. But he went to stay with friends.”

“What friends?”

“Sam and Katie. They run a guest house—Greenock’s. Bernie was going to stay with Sam and Katie.”

Struggling to keep his excitement and surprise to himself, Banks asked how Bernard had got to know Sam and Katie. At first, Mrs Haines seemed unable to concentrate for weeping, but Banks encouraged her gently, and soon she was telling him the whole story, pulling at the handkerchief on her lap as she spoke.

“They knew each other from Armley, from after we came to Leeds. Sam lived there, too. We were neighbours. Bernie was always going on about Swainshead and how wonderful it was, and I think it were him as put the idea into Sam’s head. Anyways, Sam and Katie scrimped and saved and that’s where they ended up.”

“Did Bernie have any other close friends in Swainshead?”

“Not really,” Esther said. “Most of his childhood mates had moved away. There weren’t any jobs for them up there.”

“How did he get on with the Colliers?”

“A bit above our station,” Esther said. “Oh, they’d say hello, but they weren’t friends of his, not as far as I know. You can’t be, can you, not with the sons of the fellow what owns your land?”

“I suppose not,” Banks said. “Was there any bitterness over losing the farm?”

“I wouldn’t say that, no. Sadness, yes, but bitterness? No. It were us own fault. There wasn’t much land fit for anything but sheep, and when the flock took sick . . .”

“What was Mr Collier’s attitude?”

“Mr Walter?”

“Yes.”

“He were right sorry for us. He helped out as much as he could, but it were no use. He were preparing to sell off to John Fletcher anyway. Getting out of farming, he were.”

“How would that have affected you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The sale.”

“Oh. Mr Walter said he’d write it into the terms that we could stay. John Fletcher didn’t mind. He and Dad got on quite well.”

“So there was no ill feeling between your family and John Fletcher or the Colliers?”

“No. Not to speak of. But I didn’t think much of them.”

“Oh?”

She pulled harder at the handkerchief on her lap, and it began to tear along one edge. “I always thought they were a pair of right toffee-nosed gits, but I never said nowt. Stephen thinks he’s God’s gift to women, and that Nicholas is a bit doolally, if you ask me.”

“In what way?”

“Have you met him?”

“Yes.”

“He’s like a little kid, gets all over-excited. Especially when he’s had a drink or two. Practically slavers all over a person, he does. Especially women. He even tried it on with me once, but I sent him away with his tail between his legs.” She shuddered. “I don’t know how they put up with him at that there school, unless they’re all a bit that way.”

“What about Stephen?”

Esther shrugged. “Seems a pleasant enough gent on the outside.

Bit of a smoothie, really. Got a lot more class than his brother. Bit two-faced, though.”

“In what way?”

“You know. All friendly one minute, then cuts you dead next time he sees you. But they can afford to do that, can’t they?”

“Who can?”

“Rich folks. Don’t have to live like ordinary people, like you and me, do they?”

“I don’t imagine they have the same priorities, no,” Banks said, unsure whether he approved of being called an ordinary person. “Did he try it on too?”

“Mr Stephen? No. Oh, he liked the girls, all right, but he was too much of a gentleman, for all his faults.”

Mrs Haines seemed to have forgotten her grief for a few moments, so absorbed had she been in the past, but as soon as silence fell, her tears began to flow again and her husband put his arm around her. In
the kitchen, something smashed, and the child ran wailing into the room and buried his jammy face in Esther Haines’s lap.

Banks stood up. “You’ve been very helpful,” he said. “I’m sorry to have been the bearer of such bad news.”

Esther nodded, handkerchief pressed to her mouth, and Mr Haines showed him to the door. “What are we to do about . . . you know . . .”

“The remains?”

“Aye.”

“We’ll be in touch soon,” Banks said. “Don’t worry.”

Upstairs, a baby started crying.

The first thing Banks did was look for a phonebox to call Sandra and tell her when he’d be back. That didn’t prove as easy as it sounded. The first three he came across had been vandalized, and he had to drive almost two miles before he found one that worked.

It was a pleasant drive back to Eastvale through Harrogate and Ripon. In a quiet mood, he slipped in Delius’s
North Country Sketches
instead of the sixties pop he’d been listening to. As he drove, he tried to piece together all the information he’d got that day. Whichever way he looked at it, the trail led back to Swainshead, the Greenocks, the Colliers and John Fletcher.