The Hanging Valley Read Free Page A

during an April frost, and rebuilding seemed a suitable spring project.
    The telephone call found its way, instead, to the office of Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, who sat browsing through the Guardian arts page, counting his blessings that crime had been so slack in Eastvale recently. After all, he had transferred from London almost two years ago for a bit of peace and quiet. He liked detective work and couldn’t imagine doing anything else, but thesheer pressure of the job—unpleasant, most of it—and the growing sense of confrontation between police and citizens in the capital had got him down. For his own and his family’s sake, he had made the move. Eastvale hadn’t been quite as peaceful as he’d expected, but at the moment all he had to deal with were a couple of minor break-ins and the aftermath of a tremendous punch-up in The Oak. It had started when five soldiers from Catterick camp had taunted a group of unemployed miners from Durham. Three people ended up in hospital with injuries ranging from bruised and swollen testicles to a bitten-off earlobe, and the others were cooling off in the cells waiting to appear before the magistrate.
    “Someone asking for the super, sir,” said Sergeant Rowe, when Banks picked up the phone. “His line’s busy.”
    “It’s all right,” Banks said, “I’ll take it.”
    A breathless, slightly slurred voice came on the line. “Hello, is that Inspector Gristhorpe?”
    Banks introduced himself and encouraged the caller, who gave his name as Neil Fellowes, to continue.
    “There’s a body,” Fellowes said. “Up on the fells. I found it.”
    “Where are you now?”
    “A pub. The White Rose.”
    “Whereabouts?”
    “What? Oh, I see. In Swainshead.”
    Banks wrote the details down on his scrap pad.
    “Are you sure it’s a human body?” he asked. There had been mistakes made in the past, and the police had more than once been dragged out to examine piles of old sacks, dead sheep or rotten tree trunks.
    “Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”
    “Male or female?”
    “I . . . I didn’t look. It was—”
    The next few words were muffled.
    “All right, Mr Fellowes,” Banks said. “Just stay where you are and we’ll be along as soon as possible.”
    Gristhorpe had finished his call when Banks tapped on the door and entered his office. With its overflowing bookcases and dim lighting, it looked more like a study than part of a police station.
    “Ah, Alan,” Gristhorpe said, rubbing his hands together. “They said they’ll deliver before the weekend, so we can make a start on the repairs Sunday, if you’d care to come?”
    Working on the dry-stone wall, which fenced in nothing and was going nowhere, had become something of a ritual for the superintendent and his chief inspector. Banks had come to look forward to those Sunday afternoons on the north daleside above Lyndgarth, where Gristhorpe lived alone in his farmhouse. Mostly they worked in silence, and the job created a bond between them, a bond that Banks, still an incomer to the Yorkshire Dales, valued greatly.
    “Yes,” he answered. “Very much. Look, I’ve just had a rather garbled phonecall from a chap by the name of Neil Fellowes. Says he’s found a body on the fell near Swainshead.”
    Gristhorpe leaned back in his chair, linked his hands behind his head and frowned. “Any details?”
    “No. He’s still a bit shook up, by the sound of it. Shall I go?”
    “We’ll both go.” Gristhorpe stood up decisively. “It’s not the first time a body has turned up in The Head.”
    “The Head?”
    “That’s what the locals call it, the whole area around Swainshead village. It’s the source of the River Swain, the head of the dale.” He looked at his watch. “It’s about twenty-five miles, but I’m sure we’ll make it before closing time if I remember Freddie Metcalfe.”
    Banks was puzzled. It was unusual for Gristhorpe to involve himself so much in an actual field investigation. As head of Eastvale