The Hanging Valley Read Free

visiting couple having a picnic, the old men gossiping as usual on the small stone bridge. She could see it all, but not feel the beauty of any of it.
    And there, almost dead opposite, was the White Rose, founded in 1605, as its sign proudly proclaimed, where Sam would no doubt be hob-nobbing with his upper-class chums. The fool, Katie thought. He thinks he’s well in, but they’ll never really accept him, even after all these years and all he’s done for them. Their kind never does. She was sure they laughed at himbehind his back. And had he noticed the way Nicholas Collier kept looking at her? Did Sam know about the times Nicholas had tried to touch her?
    Katie shuddered at the thought. Outside, a sudden movement caught her eye and she saw the old men part like the Red Sea and stare open-mouthed as a slight figure hurried across the bridge.
    It was that man who’d set off just a few hours ago, Katie realized, the mild-mannered clerk from Castleford, or Featherstone, or somewhere like that. Surely he’d said he was heading for the Pennine Way? And he was as white as the pub front. He turned left at the end of the bridge, hurried the last few yards and went running into the White Rose.
    Katie felt her chest tighten. What was it that had brought him back in such a state? What was wrong? Surely nothing terrible had happened in Swainshead? Not again.
    III
    “Well,” Sam Greenock was saying about the racial mix in England, “they have their ways, I suppose, but—”
    Then Neil Fellowes burst through the door and looked desperately around the pub for a familiar face.
    Seeing Sam at his usual table with the Collier brothers and John Fletcher, Neil hurried over and pulled up a chair.
    “We must do something,” he said, gasping for breath and pointing outside. “There’s a body up on the fell. Dead.”
    “Calm down, mate,” Sam said. “Get your breath, then tell us what’s happened.” He called over to the barman. “A brandy for Mr Fellowes, Freddie, if you please. A large one.” Seeing Freddie hesitate, he added, “Don’t worry, you bloody old skinflint, I’ll pay. And get a move on.”
    Conversation at the table stopped while Freddie Metcalfe carried the drink over. Neil gulped the brandy and it brought on a coughing fit.
    “At least that’s put a bit of colour back in your cheeks,” Sam said, slapping Neil on the back.
    “It was terrible,” Neil said, wiping off the brandy where it had dribbled down his chin. He wasn’t used to strong drink, but he did approve of it in emergencies such as this.
    “His face was all gone, all eaten away, and the whole thing was moving, like waves.” He put the glass to his thin lips again and drained it. “We must do something. The police.” He got up and strode over to Freddie Metcalfe. “Where’s the police station in Swainshead?”
    Metcalfe scratched his shiny red scalp and answered slowly. “Let me see . . . There aren’t no bobbies in T’Head itself. Nearest’s Helmthorpe, I reckon. Sergeant Mullins and young Weaver. That’s nigh on ten miles off.”
    Neil bought himself another double brandy while Metcalfe screwed up his weather-beaten face and thought.
    “They’ll be no bloody use, Freddie,” Sam called over. “Not for something like this. It’s CID business, this is.”
    “Aye,” Metcalfe agreed, “I reckon tha’s right, Sam. In that case, young feller mi’lad,” he said to Neil, “it’ll be that chap in Eastvale tha’ll be after. T’one who were out ’ere last time we ’ad a bit o’bother. Gristhorpe, Chief Inspector Gristhorpe. Years back it was, though. Probably dead now. Come on, lad, you can use this phone, seeing as it’s an emergency.”
    IV
    “Chief Inspector” Gristhorpe, now Superintendent, was far from dead. When the call came through, he was on another line talking to Redshaw’s Quarries about a delivery for the dry-stone wall he was building. Despite all the care he put into the endeavour, a section had collapsed