Watching the Dark (Inspector Banks Mystery) (15 page)

‘Do the villagers use it often?’

Her eyes widened. ‘Villagers? Why would we? We all have proper telephones. Some of the newcomers even have mobiles.’

What year was it here? Banks wondered. And just how new were the newcomers? He was surprised that mobiles even got coverage in such a remote area, but there were towers all over the place these days. Still, the fact remained that Bill Quinn had received two telephone calls from the very box in question over the period he had been at St Peter’s. That certainly didn’t smack of passing tourists; it indicated deliberation, rather than chance. ‘Perhaps for privacy, or a fault on the home line?’ Banks suggested. ‘Have you noticed anyone you know using that public telephone over the past week or two?’

‘I haven’t noticed anyone I know using it for the past
year
or two,’ Mrs Boscombe replied.

‘Are any of the cottages rentals?’

Mrs Boscombe bristled. ‘I should think not. We have strict rules about that sort of thing in the village. Besides, who’d want to rent a cottage here? There’s no pub, no general store, nothing. You’d have to go all the way to Lyndgarth for anything like that.’

‘Perhaps someone who likes the country air, a walker, bird watcher, naturalist? Some people enjoy the solitary existence, at least for a while.’

‘Perhaps. But there are no rental cottages available in the village.’

‘Mrs Boscombe,’ Banks said, hoping not to betray in his tone the desperation and frustration he was feeling. ‘It’s very important. We have information that someone we’re investigating received two telephone calls from that box within the past ten days. Now, does that sound like a tourist to you?’

Her face lit up. ‘No, it certainly doesn’t. The tourists rarely use the telephone, or if they do, they use it only once. Mostly they just take photographs of their husbands or wives pretending to use it. Is it a true mystery then? Has there been a
murder
? Oh, I do so wish Giles were here.’ She checked her watch. ‘Perhaps if you could just stay for another half hour or so? He’s usually not so long. More tea? I have fresh scones.’

The prospect of spending any longer in the cramped living room surrounded by twee knick-knacks and a garrulous old woman had about as much appeal as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Winsome and Joanna were looking twitchy, too, Banks noticed. ‘Can you think of anyone?’ he asked. ‘You have the perfect view of the place. If the locals don’t use it, and the tourists don’t use it, then who does?’

‘Only the Gypsies, I suppose, if you care to count them.’

‘Gypsies?’

She waved her hand in the air. ‘Oh, you know. Gypsies, Travellers. Whatever they call themselves. They don’t stop anywhere long enough to have proper telephones installed, do they, and I don’t suppose they can afford mobiles, anyway. Not when they’re all on the dole.’

‘Who are these people?’

‘I’m afraid I have no idea. I’ve just seen them in the village occasionally, a man and a woman, separately. It may be terribly superficial of me to jump to conclusions, but there it is. Greasy hair, dirty clothes, unshaven face. And you should see the man.’

It took Banks a moment, but he glanced at Mrs Boscombe and saw the glimmer of a smile on her face. She’d cracked a joke, knew it, and was proud of it. He laughed, and the others laughed with him. ‘So did you see this Gypsy man or woman use the telephone recently?’ he asked.

‘Yes. A couple of times in the past week or two,’ Mrs Boscombe said.

‘But they weren’t together?’

‘No.’

Banks took out the photo of the girl with Bill Quinn. ‘Is she anything like the woman you mentioned?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t get a good look at her, but I would say the one I saw was older, and she had a bit more flesh on her bones. No, it wasn’t her.’

‘OK,’ said Banks, feeling disappointed. If the photo had been taken a few years ago, the woman might have changed, he thought. ‘What about the man? What can you tell me about him?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about him, or about any of them.’

‘Are there any others?’

‘I don’t know. I only saw the two of them use the phone, and it was always after dark. I could only see what I did because the box is well-lit, of course.’

‘Do you remember what days?’

‘Not really. I think the man was last here on Tuesday about nine, because I’d just finished watching
Holby City
, a little weakness of mine. The woman . . . it might have been Sunday. Or maybe Saturday. The weekend, I think, anyway.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘I could only see him in the light from the telephone box. About your height, perhaps, wearing dirty jeans and a scruffy old donkey jacket, hair over his collar, hadn’t been washed in a while, beginnings of a beard and moustache.’

‘Fat or thin?’

‘Maybe just a little more filled out than you. Certainly not fat, not by any stretch of the imagination.’

‘The colour of his hair?’

‘Dark. Black or brown, it would be impossible to say exactly.’

‘Did he talk on the telephone for long?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t linger at the window to watch. All I know is by the time I’d finished what I was doing, he was gone again. Say maybe fifteen or twenty minutes.’

That didn’t quite match the four-minute call that Quinn had received from the box last Tuesday, so perhaps the man had made more than one call. The records from the phone box would tell them what other numbers had been called. If he had phoned Bill Quinn at about nine o’clock on Tuesday, that would have been during quiz night, so perhaps Quinn had missed quiz night because he had been expecting the call. It was a possibility, at any rate. ‘Is there anything else you can remember about this man?’ Banks asked. ‘How old would you say he was?’

‘I have no idea. Quite young. Mid-thirties, perhaps? The beard may have made him look older, of course.’

‘Would you recognise him again?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t really make out any clear features, if you know what I mean. I’m quite good at remembering faces, though, even if I’m not very good at describing them. I might remember him.’

‘Do you know where the camp is?’

‘There isn’t one, really. Not exactly a camp, as such.’

Banks’s shoulders slumped. ‘So you don’t know where he was living?’

‘I didn’t say that. I said there isn’t a Gypsy camp as such. Giles told me he heard it from a rambler that there’s someone living up at the old Garskill Farm. It’s about two miles away, on the moors. I can’t imagine what the poor fellow was doing walking up near there, even if he is a rambler, as it’s well off the beaten track and . . . well . . . it’s not the sort of place one wants to be alone.’

‘Why is that?’

‘One hears stories. Old stories. It’s a wild part of the moor. Most people give it a wide berth. There’s something eerie about the place.’

‘You mean it’s haunted?’

‘That’s what some folk believe.’

‘And you?’

‘I’ve no cause to go up there. It’s wild moorland. You’d risk getting lost – sometimes those fogs creep up all of a sudden, like, and you can’t see your hand in front of your face. And there are bogs, fens, mires, old lead mine workings, sinkholes. It’s not safe.’

‘Good enough reason not to go there, then,’ said Banks, smiling. ‘Even without the ghosts. What about kids? Is it somewhere the local kids might go to drink, take drugs or have sex?’

‘No. There aren’t really any local kids around here, and there are plenty of places nearer Lyndgarth or Helmthorpe for that sort of thing. Less remote, perhaps, but a lot more comfortable.’

‘So you think this man and the woman you saw might be squatting up at Garskill Farm?’

‘It’s the most likely place.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Not much to tell, really. Someone must own it, but I can’t tell you who. It’s been abandoned as long as I can remember. Falling to rack and ruin. I’m not even certain it was ever a working farm. It’s my guess it belonged to whoever owned the lead mines, and when the industry died years back, well, they moved on.’

Why on earth, Banks wondered, would someone walk two miles each way twice, eight miles in all, to talk to Bill Quinn on a public telephone if it wasn’t important? Clearly whoever had done it didn’t have access either to a closer land line, or to a mobile, or he feared that someone might be listening in to his conversations. But why? And what, if anything, did he have to do with Bill Quinn’s murder?

They heard the sound of the gate opening and dogs barking. Mrs Boscombe got to her feet. ‘Ah, here’s Giles and the lads. He
will
be glad to see you. You can tell him about all about the murders you’ve solved. I’ll just put the kettle on again.’

There was no easy way up and over the dale to Garskill Farm, Giles Boscombe had explained, before they managed to cut short his analysis of what should be done about the presence of Gypsies and Travellers. Neither Banks’s Porsche nor Winsome’s Toyota would make it up the winding track, let alone over the top and across the moorland. There were probably other ways in – from the north, perhaps, or even the east or west – but they would most likely involve long detours and, no doubt, getting lost. Even if mobiles worked, satnavs weren’t always reliable in this desolate part of the world. People often mixed up the dales and the moors, but Brontë country was a few miles south-west of where they were, though the moorland landscape on the tops between the dales had many similarities with the moors the Brontës had walked.

There were no village bobbies any more; like the oggie man, they were a thing of the past. But Banks did happen to know that the Safe Community officer in Lyndgarth happened to drive a Range Rover, and when they raised him on the phone, he sounded only too willing to whizz over to Ingleby and do his best to get them as close to Garskill Farm as possible.

When Constable Vernon Jarrow arrived, they left their own cars by the telephone box and piled into his Range Rover, Banks in the front and Winsome and Joanna in the back. PC Jarrow was a pleasant, round-faced local fellow with the weather-beaten look of a countryman. He said he was used to driving off road. Banks got out and opened the gate to the winding lane up the daleside, closing it behind him. Jarrow drove slowly and carefully, but the Range Rover still bumped over the rocks sticking out of the dirt and the ruts made by tractors. Some of the bends were almost too tight, but he made them. Banks was reminded of a tour bus he had once taken with Sandra to an ancient site in Greece, hugging the edge of a steep precipice all the way.

‘Do you know Garskill Farm?’ he asked Jarrow over the noise of the engine.

‘I know of it,’ Jarrow answered. ‘It’s been like that for years. Abandoned.’

‘Ever been up there?’

‘No reason to.’

‘Not even just to check on it?’

Jarrow gave Banks a bemused sideways glance. ‘Check on what? There’s nothing there.’

‘Mrs Boscombe heard rumours there’s been some Gypsies or Travellers staying up there recently.’

Jarrow grunted. ‘They’re welcome. Long as they don’t cause any trouble in the community.’

‘How do you know they haven’t?’

‘I’d have heard about it, wouldn’t I?’

It seemed like unassailable logic. Banks didn’t blame Jarrow for not checking out every square inch of his patch as frequently as possible, but that kind of complacency in assuming that he would know the minute anything was wrong was no excuse. Still, he let it go. After all, the man was driving them to a remote spot, and there was no sense in giving him a bollocking on the way.

When the track came to the east–west lane halfway up the daleside, PC Jarrow kept going straight on, up the daleside, where the road became even more rudimentary, so much so that it was hard to make out at all sometimes, forcing them back in their seats. Soon, they were weaving between outcrops of limestone, bouncing around even more than on the rutted track below. If Banks had contrived this whole business to irritate and upset Joanna Passero he couldn’t have done a better job, he realised, as he caught a glimpse of her ashen face in the rear-view mirror, hand to her mouth. But he hadn’t, and he found himself feeling sorry for her. He had no idea that she suffered from carsickness, and she hadn’t said anything. Still, there was nothing he could do about it at this point; she would simply have to hold on.

Soon they were driving across the open moorland, and while it was still as bumpy, at least they were more or less on the flat. This had once been an area of about two or three thriving villages, Banks knew. There was an isolated old house known locally as the School House, which was exactly what it had been even as late as the First World War. After that, the moorland had fallen into decline and never recovered. The military had been making noises for years about taking it over for manoeuvres, but they already had plenty of land in the area, and they didn’t seem to need Garskill Moor yet.

There were roads, tracks or laneways criss-crossing the rolling tracts of gorse and heather, and soon the bumpiness of the ride improved somewhat. Joanna took her hand away from her mouth, but she was still pale. Winsome didn’t seem bothered by any of it. Jarrow drove slowly, straight ahead. It was an interesting landscape, Banks thought. People often assume the moorland that runs along the tops between dales is flat and barren, but this landscape was undulating, with surprising chasms appearing suddenly at one side or the other, unexpected becks lined with trees, clumps of bright wildflowers, and the ruined flues and furnaces of abandoned lead mines in the distance. Even in the pale April sunlight, it resembled an abandoned land, an asteroid once settled, then deserted.