A Dedicated Man Read Free Page B

tall, sandy hair. Still quite young-looking. They live in
Gratly.’
    ‘I thought you said they lived in the village.’
    ‘Same thing really, sir,’ Weaver explained. ‘You see, Gratly’s just a little hamlet, a few old houses off the road. Doesn’t even have a pub. But now the newer
houses have spread up the hill, the two are as near as makes no difference. The locals like to keep the name, though. Sense of independence, I suppose.’
    Banks drove down the hill towards the bridge. Weaver pointed ahead over the river and up the opposite valley side: ‘That’s Gratly, sir.’
    Banks saw the row of new houses, some still under construction; then there was a space of about a hundred yards before the crossroads lined with older cottages.
    ‘I see what you mean,’ Banks said. At least the builders were doing a tasteful job, following the design of the originals and using the same local stone.
    Weaver went on making conversation no doubt intended to help him forget the sight of his first corpse. ‘Just about all the new houses in Helmthorpe are at this side of the village.
You’ll get nothing new on the east side. Some bright sparks say it’s because it was settled from the east. Vikings, Saxons, Romans and whatnot. Course, you don’t find many traces
of them now, but the place stills seems to spread westwards.’ He thought about what he’d said for a moment and added with a smile, ‘Spreads slowly, that is, sir.’
    Much as Banks was interested in snippets of local history, he lost track of Weaver’s words as he drove over the low stone bridge and crossed Helmthorpe High Street. He cursed to himself.
It was early Sunday afternoon and, from what he could see around him, that meant car-washing time in the village. Men stood in driveways in front of garages with their sleeves rolled up and buckets
of soapy water by their sides. Shiny car roofs gleamed and water dripped from doors and bumpers. Polished chrome shone. If Harry Steadman had been dumped from a local car, all traces of that grisly
journey would have been obliterated by now in the most natural way: soaped and waxed over, vacuumed and swept out.
    Steadman’s house, last in a short block running left from the road, was larger than Banks had imagined. It was solidly built and looked weather-beaten enough to pass for a historic
building. That meant it would sell for a historic price, too, he noted. A double garage had been built on the eastern side, and the large garden, bordered by a low wall, consisted of a well-kept
lawn with a colourful flower bed at its centre and rose bushes against the house front and the neighbour’s fence. Leaving Weaver in the car, Banks walked down the crazy paving and rang the
doorbell.
    The woman who answered, holding a cup of tea in her hand, looked puzzled to find a stranger standing before her. She was plain-looking, with stringy, lifeless brown hair, and wore a pair of
overlarge, unbecoming spectacles. She was dressed in a shapeless beige cardigan and baggy checked slacks. Banks thought she might be the cleaning lady, so he phrased his greeting as a question:
‘Mrs Steadman?’
    ‘Yes,’ the woman answered hesitantly, peering at him through her glasses. He introduced himself and felt the familiar tightening in his stomach as he was ushered into the living
room. It was always like that. No amount of experience purged that gut-wrenching feeling of sympathy that accompanied the soothing, useless words, the empty gestures. For Banks there was always a
shadow: it could be my wife, it could be someone telling me about my daughter. It was the same as that first glimpse of the murder victim. Death and its long aftermath had never
become a matter of routine for him but remained always an abomination, a reminder one hardly needed of man’s cruelty to his fellow man, his fallen nature.
    Although the room was messy – a low table littered with magazines, knitting spread out on a chair, records out of their sleeves by