The phone rang.
Richmond cursed and answered it. The switchboard operator told him it was someone calling for Superintendent Gristhorpe, who was out, so she had put the call through to Richmond.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice came on the line.
Richmond introduced himself. “What can I do for you?”
“Well,” she said hesitantly, “I really wanted the man in charge. I called that temporary number, you know, the one you mentioned in the paper, and the constable there told me to call this number if I wanted to talk to Superintendent Gristhorpe.”
Richmond explained the situation. “I’m sure I can help you,” he added. “What’s it about?”
“All right,” she said. “The reason I’m calling you so late is that I’ve only just heard it from the woman who does the cleaning. She does it once a week, you see, on Saturday mornings.”
“Heard what?”
“They’ve gone. Lock, stock and barrel. Both of them. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if they aren’t fully paid up or anything, and I wouldn’t say they looked exactly like the couple the papers described, but it is funny, isn’t it? People don’t usually just take off like that without so much as a by-your-leave, not when they’ve paid cash in advance.”
Richmond held the receiver away from his ear for a moment and frowned. Why didn’t this make any sense? Was he going insane? Had the computer radiation finally eaten its way into his frontal lobes?
“Where are you calling from?” he asked.
She sounded surprised. “Eastvale, of course. My office. I’m working late.”
“Your name?”
“Patricia. Patricia Cummings. But—”
“One thing at a time. You said your office. What kind of office?”
“I’m an estate agent. Randall and Palmer’s, just across the square from the police station. Now—”
“All right,” Richmond said. “I know the place. What are you calling about?”
“I thought I’d made myself perfectly clear, but apparently you need it spelled out.”
Richmond grinned. “Yes, please. Spell it out.”
“It’s about that girl who disappeared, Gemma Scupham. At least it might be. That’s why I wanted to speak to the man in charge. I think I might know something about the couple you’re looking for, the ones who did it.”
“I’ll be right over,” Richmond said, and hung up. He left a message at the front desk for Gristhorpe and dashed out into the market square.
FIVE
I
As Banks drove west towards Fortford again, the low sun silhouetted the trees ahead. Some of them, stripped bare by Dutch elm disease, looked like skeletal hands clawing their way out of the earth. An evening haze hung over Fortford and softened the edges of the hills beyond the village. It muted the vibrant greens of the ryegrass on the lower dalesides and washed out the browns and greys of the upper pastures.
Banks drove into the village and passed the green, to his left, where a group of elderly locals sat gossiping and passing the time on a bench below the partially excavated Roman fort on the round hillock opposite. Smoke from their pipes drifted slowly on the hazy evening air.
It felt like a summer evening, Banks thought, and wondered just how long the fine weather would last; not long, if you believed the forecasters. Still, at least for now he could drive with his window down and enjoy the fresh air, except when it was permeated by the overripe tang of manure. Sometimes, though, a different smell would drift in, a garden bonfire, burning vegetation acrid on the air. He listened to Gurney’s “Preludes” and felt that the piano music possessed the same starkly beautiful quality as the songs, unmistakably Gurney, heart-rending in the way it snatched moments of order from chaos.
At the corner, by the whitewashed sixteenth-century pub, he turned right onto the Lyndgarth road. Way ahead, about halfway up the daleside, he could see Lyndgarth itself, limestone cottages clustered around a small green, and the stubby, square tower of St Mary’s. About half a mile north of the village, he could make out Gristhorpe’s old grey farmhouse. Just to the left of Lyndgarth, a little lower down the hillside, stood the dark ruin of Devraulx Abbey, partially hidden by trees, looking eerie and haunted in the smoky evening light.
Banks drove only as far as the small stone bridge over the River Swain and turned left into a gravelled drive. Sheltered on all sides but the water by poplars, “Leasholme” was an ideal, secluded spot for a reclusive millionaire to retire to. Banks had phoned Adam Harkness earlier and been invited that very evening. He doubted he would find out much from Carl Johnson’s employer, but he had to try.
He parked at the end of the drive beside Harkness’s Jaguar. The house itself was a mix of Elizabethan and seventeenth-century styles, built mostly of limestone, with grit-stone lintels and cornerstones and a flagged roof. It was, however, larger than most, and had clearly belonged to a wealthy landowner. Over the door, the date read 1617, but Banks guessed the original structure had been there earlier. The large garden had little to show but roses that time of year, but it looked well designed and cared for. Carl Johnson’s green fingers, no doubt.
Finally, irritated by the cloud of gnats that hung over him, Banks rang the bell.
Harkness opened the door a few moments later and beckoned him inside, then led him along a cavernous hallway into a room at the back of the house, which turned out to be the library. Bookcases, made of dark wood, covered three walls, flanking a heavy door in one and a stone hearth in another. A white wicker armchair faced the fourth wall, where french windows opened into the garden. The well-kept lawn sloped down to the riverbank, fringed with rushes, and just to the left, a large copper beech framed a view of the Leas, with Lyndgarth and Aldington Edge beyond, just obscuring Devraulx Abbey behind its thick foliage. The river possessed a magical quality in the fading light; slow-moving, mirror-like, it presented a perfect reflection of the reeds that grew by its banks.
“It is spectacular, isn’t it?” Harkness said. “It’s one of the reasons I bought the place. It’s much too big for me, of course. I don’t even use half the rooms.”
Banks had noticed the dust in the hall and a certain mustiness to the atmosphere. Even the library was untidy, with a large desk littered with papers, pens, rubber bands and a few books placed in small piles on the floor beneath the shelves.
“How long have you been here?” Banks asked.
“Two years. I still travel a fair bit. I’m not retired yet, you know, still got a lot of life in me. But I thought it was time I deserved to take things easy, put in a bit more golf.”
Harkness looked about fifty-five. He was Banks’s height, with silver hair and that brick-red, lined complexion peculiar to the Englishmen who have spent years in warmer climates. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt and navy-blue trousers. The pot-belly and sagging breasts showed he wasn’t a man who took much exercise off the golf course.