‘So what happened?’ Annie asked, mostly of herself. ‘He wanders up here in his Burton’s best, for whatever reason, trips over a heather root, tumbles down the gully, breaks his neck and smashes his skull and dies.’
‘Something like that,’ the doctor agreed. ‘From what I could see, the blood has gathered where you expect it to be if he fell and died in the position he was found in. When Dr Glendenning gets him stripped off on the table, he should be able to give you an even better idea whether your man died here or was transported from elsewhere and dumped, but I’d say it happened here. Dr Glendenning will also be able to tell you whether a stroke or a heart attack or drug overdose was involved. But unless you want me to strip him right down here and now and open him up, I’ve told you all I can for the moment.’
‘No, that’s OK,’ said Annie. ‘Best leave it for the post-mortem.’ She paused and pushed some strands of hair behind her ears. The wind soon whipped them out again. ‘But it doesn’t make much sense, does it?’ she asked. ‘Where did he wander from? Why? Was he drunk? How did he get here? Where’s his car? He surely can’t have walked here, can he?’
Banks lived in Gratly, and he had a fine view of Tetchley Fell from the back of his cottage. Though Annie knew that he liked walking and thought himself reasonably fit for someone who wasn’t an exercise fanatic, she also knew that he had never so much as thought of attempting the two-mile walk up to the moors. Like most people, including the walking club, if he fancied a ramble on the moors he would have driven and used the car park.
‘That I can’t tell you,’ said Dr Burns. ‘But I will agree that he’s not in the sort of shape to be doing much climbing and walking.’
Annie put on the latex gloves she had carried from the car and knelt by the body. ‘Let’s at least see if we can find out who he was without disturbing things too much.’
Deftly, Annie searched through the dead man’s pockets. All she found was a fob of keys in his side jacket pocket, which she held up for Gerry to see. Then she turned to the men from the coroner’s van who were standing by with a gurney. ‘All right, lads,’ she said. ‘He’s all yours now.’
Stockton-on-Tees was only about an hour’s drive from Eastvale, though the traffic around the Scotch Corner roadworks on the A1 added at least another ten minutes on that particular afternoon. The problem was, as Banks understood it, that the workers kept digging up more Roman ruins as they widened the road, and therefore had to bring in more teams of archaeologists, thus slowing progress. Whatever the reason, the 50 MPH zone seemed to go on for ever. Banks took the Darlington exit, then carried on along the A66 heading east.
Much of the manufacturing Stockton had been known for was in decline these days, and as a result, there were some tremendously depressed and depressing areas, which often rubbed shoulders with more affluent neighbourhoods. Banks wouldn’t have called the terraced street where Adrienne’s parents lived either affluent or depressed. It was part of a slightly shopworn early sixties council estate. Each house had a small unfenced garden, but there were no garages or driveways. The road was filled with parked cars, and none of them were Beemers or Mercs.
Mrs Munro, wearing jeans and a navy jumper, recognised Banks and Winsome from the previous evening and invited them in. She was an attractive woman in her early forties, with wavy fair hair, long legs and a waspish waist, but today her eyes were red-rimmed with grief, and there was a pile of used tissues on the low coffee table between the sofa and the electric fire. The wallpaper was a simple striped pattern, the furniture IKEA, from TV stand to small bookcase, which was mostly filled with souvenirs from Greek and Spanish holidays: figures in peasant dress, a bulbous empty wine bottle, a plastic model of the Acropolis.
‘Excuse the mess,’ Mrs Munro said, immediately grabbing a handful of tissues and taking them into the kitchen to put in the bin. ‘I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. Jim’s just having a lie down upstairs. He didn’t get a wink of sleep last night, poor lamb. I’ll get him if you want.’
‘No need yet, Mrs Munro,’ said Banks. ‘Let him sleep. We can talk to him some other time if we need to.’
‘Brenda, please.’
Banks and Winsome sat on the sofa. ‘Brenda, then,’ said Banks.
‘Can I get you both a cup of tea or something?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Banks.
But Brenda Munro was already on her feet. ‘It’s no trouble,’ she said and disappeared back into the kitchen.
‘She seems jumpy,’ Winsome mouthed, when Brenda had left the room.
Banks nodded. ‘Still in shock, probably.’ As far back as he could remember, people seemed nervous when the police came to call, and Brenda Munro had just lost her daughter. Banks felt more than a little guilty for intruding on her grief so soon, especially with so little evidence other than a vague sense of something being out of kilter.
When Brenda came back with the tea and cups on a tray, Banks said, ‘We’re really sorry to be bothering you at a time like this, but there are one or two questions you might be able to answer for us. As yet, we know very little about Adrienne or her life.’
Brenda clasped her hands on her lap and wrung them together, an unused tissue tearing between them. ‘What can I tell you? She was just a normal girl. Maybe a bit shy and quiet. I’m her mother. I loved her very much. We both did.’
‘Did you get along well?’
‘As well as any mother gets along with her teenage daughter.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I like to think we were close.’ Her eyes filled up and she reached for a tissue. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Banks, leaving a brief pause for Brenda Munro to compose herself. ‘We all have secrets. She was nineteen, is that right?’
Brenda sniffled. ‘Yes, just starting her second year at Eastvale College.’
‘Any brothers or sisters?’
‘Mari. She’s married. They live in Berwick. She’s on her way down right now. She’ll be devastated.’
‘Close, were they?’
‘Like twins, though Mari’s three years older than Adrienne.’
Banks remembered the chatty emails to and from Mari on Adrienne’s mobile. ‘Did Adrienne confide in her big sister?’
‘She did when she was younger, but they don’t see one another quite so often, not now Mari has baby Nadine and Adrienne has her studies. Had.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I can’t believe I’ll have to get used to saying that.’
Banks saw Winsome make a note and guessed she was jotting a reminder to have a chat with Mari. ‘Did Adrienne always want to study agriculture?’
‘Yes. She was crazy about animals and the countryside, and she was one of those keen environmentalists. Vegetarian and everything. We can’t have any pets because Jim’s allergic to just about everything that moves, except people, but she had a part-time job at an animal shelter in Darlington, for the RSPCA, like, taking care of mistreated pets and so on, and she’d watch just about any documentary on animals and environmental issues that came on. David Attenborough, all that sort of thing.’
‘Is that why she chose Eastvale College, the agricultural connection?’
‘Yes. Partly. It has an excellent reputation. And Adrienne loved the Dales. I think it was reading all those James Herriot books when she was a little girl. They inspired her. And she was very bright. She got good A level results. She had her heart set on Eastvale, and she wouldn’t hear of going anywhere else.’
‘What about the music? We noticed a violin and some music in her bedsit.’
‘She started learning at school. She was very talented musically. Everyone said so. We were able to afford violin lessons for her for a while. We even harboured dreams of her going to a music academy or somewhere a few years ago. But it’s not a career, is it, music? More of a hobby, really. She just loved that classical stuff. We couldn’t afford to keep up the lessons, but she played in a youth orchestra. At least she did until she started university. She had a good singing voice, too. She used to sing in a choir.’