1 ONE It was the most exhilarating feeling in the world. His thighs ached, his calves throbbed and his breath came in short sharp gasps. But he had made it. Neil Fellowes, humble wages clerk from Pontefract, stood at the summit of Swainshead Fell. Not that it was an achievement comparable to Sir Edmund Hillary’s; after all, the fell was only 1,631 feet high. But Neil was not getting any younger, and the crowd at Baxwell’s Machine Tools, where he worked, had taken the mickey something cruel when he told them he was going on a fell-walking holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. ‘Fell?’ taunted Dick Blatchley, one of the mail-room wags. ‘Tha’ll a fell before tha’s got started, Neil.’ And they had all laughed. But now, as he stood there in the thin air, his heart beating deep in his chest like the steam-driven pistons in the factory, he was the one to laugh. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back up to the bridge of his nose and wiped off the sweat over which they had slid. Next he adjusted the straps of his rucksack, which were biting into his shoulders. He had been climbing for well over an hour: nothing too dangerous – no sheer heights, nothing that required special equipment. Fell-walking was a democratic recreation, just plain hard work. And it was an ideal day for walking. The sun danced in and out between plump white clouds and a cool breeze kept the temperature down. Perfect late May weather. He stood in the rough grass and heather with nothing but a few sheep for company – and they had already turned their backs on him and scuttled a safe distance away. Lord of the whole scene, he sat on a weathered limestone boulder to savour the feeling. Back down the fell he could just make out the northern tip of Swainshead village, from where he had come. He could easily pick out the whitewashed front of the White Rose across the beck, and the lichen-covered flagstone roof of the Greenock Guest House, where he had spent a comfortable night after the previous day’s walking in Wharfedale. He had also enjoyed there a breakfast of sausage, bacon, black pudding, fried bread, grilled mushrooms, tomato, two fried eggs, tea, toast and marmalade before setting off that morning. He stood up to take in the panorama, starting with the west, where the fells descended and rolled like frozen waves to the sea. To the north-west ranged the old rounded hills of the Lake District. Neil fancied he could see the Striding Edge along Helvellyn and the occasional glint of sun on Windermere or Ullswater. Next he looked south, where the landscape hardened into the Pennines, the backbone of England. The rock was darker there, with outcrops of millstone grit ousting the glinting white limestone. Miles of wild forbidding moorland stretched down as far as Derbyshire. South-east lay Swainsdale itself, its valley bottom hidden from view. But what astonished Neil most of all was a small wooded valley down the eastern slope just below where he stood. The guidebooks hadn’t mentioned anything of particular interest on the route he had chosen; indeed, one of his reasons for taking it was that nobody was likely to spoil his solitude. Most people, it seemed to Neil, would be off in search of stone circles, old lead mines and historic buildings. In addition to its location and seclusion, the dale also had unusual foliage. It must have been a trick of the light, Neil thought, but whereas the trees everywhere else were fresh and green with spring, the ash, alders and sycamores below him seemed tinged with russet, orange and earth-brown. It seemed to him like a valley out of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It would mean an extra mile or two and an unplanned climb back out again, but the sides didn’t appear too steep, and Neil thought he might find some interesting wild flowers along the shaded banks of the beck. Balancing his pack, he struck out for the enchanted valley. Soon, the rough tussocks underfoot gave way to springier grass. When Neil entered the woods, the leaves seemed much greener now the sunlight filtered through them. The smell of wild garlic filled his nostrils and made him feel light-headed. Bluebells swayed in the breeze. He heard the beck before he saw it between the trees; it made a light bubbling sound, joyful and carefree. From the inside too, the valley clearly had a magical quality. It was more luxuriant than the surrounding area, its ferns and shrubs more lush and abundant as if, Neil thought, God had blessed it with a special grace. He eased off his rucksack and laid it down on the thick grass by the waterside. Taking off his glasses, he thought he would stay a while and relax, perhaps drink some coffee from his flask before carrying on. He rested his head on the pack and closed his eyes. His mind emptied of everything but the heady scent of the garlic, the song of the beck, the cool fingers of the wind that rustled through wild roses and honeysuckle and the warbling of skylarks as they aimed themselves up at the sun and floated down like feathers, singing. Refreshed – indeed feeling as if he had been born anew – Neil wiped his eyes and put on his glasses again. Looking around, he noticed a wild flower in the woods across the water. It seemed, from where he was, to be about a foot high, with red-brown sepals and pale yellow petals. Thinking it might be a rare lady’s slipper orchis, he decided to cross over and have a closer look. The beck wasn’t very wide, and there were plenty of fortuitously placed stepping stones. As he neared the flower, he became aware of another smell, much more harsh and cloying than the garlic or loam. It clogged his nose and stuck to his bronchial passages. Wondering what it could be, he looked around, but could see nothing unusual. Near the flower, which was definitely a lady’s slipper, some branches fallen from a tree lay on the ground and blocked his way. He started to pull them aside to get a better view. But he didn’t get very far. There, under a makeshift cover, lay the source of the smell: a human body. In the instant before he turned to vomit into the shrubs, Neil noticed two things: that it had no face, and that it seemed to be moving – its flesh was literally crawling. Pausing only to wash his face and rinse out his mouth in the beck, Neil left his rucksack where it was and hurried as fast as he could back to Swainshead. TWO Disgusting, thought Katie Greenock, turning up her nose as she emptied the waste bin of room three. You’d think people would be ashamed to leave such things lying around for anyone to see. Thank God they’d left that morning. There always had seemed something unwholesome about them anyway: the way they kissed and canoodled at the breakfast table, how it was always so long before they set off for the day and so early when they returned to their room. She didn’t even believe they were married. Sighing, Katie brushed back a strand of ash-blonde hair and emptied the bin into the black plastic bag she carried with her on her rounds. Already she was tired out. Her day began at six o’clock, and there were no easy rustic mornings of birdsong and dew for her, just sheer hard work. First she had to cook the breakfasts and coordinate everything so that the eggs weren’t cold when the bacon was ready and the tea was fresh for the guests as soon as they decided to come down. They could help themselves to juice and cereal, which she had put out earlier – though not too early, for the milk had to be chilled. The toast could get as cold as it liked – cold toast seemed to be a part of the tradition of an English breakfast – but Katie was pleased when, as sometimes happened, she succeeded in serving it warm at exactly the right time. Not that anyone ever said thank you. Then, of course, she had to serve the meals and manage a smile for all the guests, whatever their comments about the quality of the food and no matter what their sweet little children saw fit to drop on the floor or throw at the walls. She was also often asked for advice about where to go for the day, but sometimes Sam would help with that part, breaking off from his usual morning monologue on current events with which he entertained the visitors daily whether they liked it or not. Next, she had to clear the tables and wash the dishes. The machine Sam had finally bought her helped a lot. Indeed, it saved her so much time that she could hurry down to Thetford’s Grocery on the Helmthorpe Road and take her pick of the morning’s fresh produce. Sam used to do that before he had installed the machine, but now he had more time for the sundry business matters that always seemed to be pressing. When Katie had planned the menu for the evening meal and bought all the ingredients, it was time to change the sheets and clean the rooms. It was hardly surprising then that by noon she was almost always tired. If she was lucky, she could sometimes find a little time for gardening around mid afternoon. Putting off the moment when she would have to move on to the next room, Katie walked over to the window and rested her elbows on the sill. It was a fine day in a beautiful part of the world but to her the landscape felt like an enormous trap; the fells were boulders that shut her in, the stretches of moorland like deserts impossible to cross. A chance of freedom had offered itself recently, but there was nothing she could do about it yet. She could only wait patiently and see what developed. She looked down on the grassy banks at each side of the fledgling River Swain, at the children sitting patiently with their home-made fishing nets, a 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 hobnobbing 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 him behind 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. THREE ‘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 his 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.’ FOUR ‘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 drystone wall he was building. Despite all the care he had put into the endeavour, a section had collapsed 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 pages, counting his blessings that crime had been so slack in Eastvale recently. After all, he had been 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 the sheer 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 on Sunday, if you’d care to come?’ Working on the drystone 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 phone call 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 CID, the superintendent could use his discretion as regards his role in a case. Theoretically, he could, if he wanted to, take part in searches and house-to-house enquiries, but of course he never did. In part, his job was administrative. He tended to delegate casework and monitor developments from his office. This was not due to laziness, Banks realized, but because his talent was for thinking and planning, not for action or interrogation. He trusted his subordinates and allowed them far greater leeway with their cases than many superintendents did. But this time he wanted to come along. They made an incongruous couple as they walked to the car park at the back: the tall bulky Gristhorpe with his unruly thatch of grey hair, bristly moustache, pockmarked face and bushy eyebrows; and Banks, lean, slight, with angular features and short almost cropped black hair. ‘I can’t see why you keep on using your own car, Alan,’ Gristhorpe said as he eased into the passenger seat of the white Cortina and grappled with the seat belt. ‘You could save a lot of wear and tear if you took a department vehicle.’ ‘Have they got radio-cassettes?’ Banks asked. ‘You know damn well they haven’t.’ ‘Well, then.’ ‘Well, what?’ ‘I like to listen to music while I’m driving. You know I do. It helps me think.’ ‘I suppose you’re going to inflict some on me, too?’ It had always surprised Banks that so well read and cultured a person as Gristhorpe had absolutely no ear for music at all. The superintendent was tone-deaf, and even the most ethereal Mozart aria was painful to his ears. ‘Not if you don’t want,’ Banks said, smiling to himself. He knew he wouldn’t be able to smoke on the way, either. Gristhorpe was a non-smoker of the most rabid kind – reformed after a twenty-year, twenty-a-day habit. Banks pulled into the cobbled market square, turned left on to North Market Street, and headed for the main Swainsdale road, which ran by the river along the valley bottom. Gristhorpe grunted and tapped the apparatus next to the dashboard. ‘At least you’ve had a police radio fitted.’ ‘What was it you said before?’ Banks asked. ‘About this not being the first body in Swainshead.’ ‘It was before your time.’ ‘Most things were.’ Banks made the sharp westward turn, and soon they were out of the town, driving by the river meadows. Gristhorpe opened his window and gulped in the fresh air. ‘A man had his skull fractured,’ he said. ‘It was murder, no doubt about that. And we never solved it.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Some Boy Scouts found the body dumped in an old mineshaft on the fell side a couple of miles north of the village. The doctor said it had been there about a week.’ ‘When?’ ‘Just over five years ago.’ ‘Was it a local?’ ‘No. The victim was a private detective from London.’ ‘A private investigator?’ ‘That’s right. Name of Raymond Addison. A solo operator. One of the last of the breed, I should imagine.’ ‘Did you find out what he was doing up here?’ ‘No. We had his office searched, of course, but none of his files had any connection with Swainsdale. The Yard asked around among his friends and acquaintances – not that he had very many – but they turned up nothing. We thought he might have been on holiday, but why choose Yorkshire in February?’ ‘How long had he been in the village?’ ‘He’d arrived fairly late in the day and managed to get a room in a guest house run by a chap named Sam Greenock, who told us that Addison said nothing except for some remarks about the cold. He wrapped up well and went out for a walk after the evening meal, and that was the last anyone saw of him. We made enquiries, but nobody had seen or heard him. It was dark when he went out, of course, and even the old men who usually hang about chatting on the bridge come rain or shine had gone in by then.’ ‘And as far as you could find out he had no connection with the area at all?’ ‘None. And, believe me, we dug and dug. Either nobody knew or, more likely, someone wasn’t talking. He was an ex-serviceman, so we checked up on old army pals, that kind of thing. We ended up doing a house-to-house of the entire village. Nothing. It’s still unsolved.’ Banks slowed down as he drove through Helmthorpe, one of the dale’s largest villages. Beyond there, the landscape was unfamiliar to him. Though still broader than most of the dales, thanks to a glacier of particularly titanic proportions, the valley seemed to narrow slightly as they got closer to The Head, and the commons sloped more steeply up the fell sides. There were none of the long limestone scars that characterized the eastern part of Swainsdale, but the hills rose to high rounded summits of moorland. ‘And that’s not all,’ Gristhorpe added after a few moments of silence. ‘A week before Addison’s body was found – the day after he was killed, as far as the doctors could make out – a local woman disappeared. Name of Anne Ralston. Never been seen since.’ ‘And you think there must have been a connection?’ ‘Not necessarily. At the time she went, of course, the body hadn’t been discovered. The whole thing could have been a coincidence. And the doctor admitted he could have been wrong about the exact day of death, too. It’s hard to be accurate after a body’s been buried that long. But we’ve no idea what happened to her. And you’ve got to admit it’s damned odd to get a missing person and a murder in the same village within a week of each other. She could have been killed and buried, or maybe she simply ran off with a fellow somewhere. We’d hardly cause to block all the ports and airports. Besides, she could have been anywhere in the world by the time the body was found. At best we’d have liked her to answer a few questions, just to put our minds at rest. As it was, we did a bit more poking around the landscape but found no traces of another body.’ ‘Do you think she might have murdered Addison and run off?’ ‘It’s possible. But it didn’t look like a woman’s job to me. Too much muscle work involved, and Anne Ralston wasn’t one of those female bodybuilders. We questioned her boyfriend pretty closely. He’s Stephen Collier, managing director of the company she worked for. Comes from a very prominent local family.’ ‘Yes,’ Banks said. ‘I’ve heard of the Colliers. Did he cause any problems?’ ‘No. He was cooperative. Said they hadn’t been getting on all that well lately, but he’d no idea where she’d gone, or why. In the end we’d no reason to think anything had happened to her so we had to assume she’d just left. People do sometimes. And Anne Ralston seemed to be a particularly flighty lass, by all accounts.’ ‘Still . . .’ ‘Yes, I know.’ Gristhorpe sighed. ‘It’s not at all satisfactory, is it? We reached nothing but dead ends whichever direction we turned.’ Banks drove on in silence. Obviously failure was hard for Gristhorpe to swallow, as it was for most detectives. But this murder, if that’s what it really turned out to be, was a different case, five years old. He wasn’t going to let the past clutter up his thinking if he could help it. Still, it would be well to keep Raymond Addison and Anne Ralston in mind. ‘This is it,’ Gristhorpe said a few minutes later, pointing to the row of houses ahead. ‘This is Lower Head, as the locals call it.’ ‘It hardly seems a big enough place to be split into two parts,’ Banks observed. ‘It’s not a matter of size, Alan. Lower Head is the newest part of the village, the part that’s grown since the road’s become more widely used. People just stop off here to admire the view over a quick cup of tea or a pint and a pub lunch. Upper Head’s older and quieter. A bit more genteel. It’s a little north–south dale in itself, wedged between two fells. There’s a road goes north up there too, but when it gets past the village and the school it gets pretty bad. You can get to the Lake District if you’re willing to ride it out, but most people go from the Lancashire side. Turn right here.’ Banks turned. The base of a triangular village green ran beside the main road, allowing easy access to Swainshead from both directions. The first buildings he passed were a small stone church and a village hall. Following the minor road north beside the narrow River Swain, Banks could see what Gristhorpe meant. There were two rows of cottages facing each other, set back quite a bit from the river and its grassy banks. Most of them were either semis or terraced, and some had been converted into shops. They were plain sturdy houses built mostly of limestone, discoloured here and there with moss and lichen. Many had individualizing touches, such as mullions or white borders painted around doors and windows. Behind the houses on both sides, the commons sloped up, criss-crossed here and there by drystone walls, and gave way to steep moorland fells. Banks parked the car outside the whitewashed pub and Gristhorpe pointed to a large house farther up the road. ‘That’s the Collier place,’ he said. ‘The old man was one of the richest farmers and landowners around these parts. He also had the sense to invest his money in a food-processing plant just west of here. He’s dead now, but young Stephen runs the factory and he shares the house with his brother. They’ve split it into two halves. Ugly pile of stone, isn’t it?’ Banks didn’t say so, but he rather admired the Victorian extravagance of the place, so at odds with the utilitarian austerity of most Dales architecture. Certainly it was ugly: oriels and turrets cluttered the upper half, making the whole building look top-heavy, and there was a stone porch at each front entrance. They probably had a gazebo and a folly in the back garden too, he thought. ‘And that’s where Raymond Addison stayed,’ Gristhorpe said, pointing across the beck. The house, made of two knocked-together semis, was separated from the smaller terraced houses on either side by only a few feet. A sign, GREENOCK GUEST HOUSE, hung in the colourful well-tended garden. ‘’Ey up, lads,’ Freddie Metcalfe said as they entered, ‘t’ Sweeney’s ’ere.’ ‘Hello again, Freddie,’ Gristhorpe said, leading Banks over to the bar. ‘Still serving drinks after hours?’ ‘Only to the select few, Mr Gristhorpe,’ Metcalfe replied proudly. ‘What’ll you gents be ’aving?’ He looked at Banks suspiciously. ‘Is ’e over eighteen?’ ‘Just,’ Gristhorpe answered. Freddie burst into a rasping smoker’s laugh. ‘What’s this about a body?’ Gristhorpe asked. Metcalfe pursed his fleshy lips and nodded towards the only occupied table. ‘Bloke there says he found one on t’ fell. ’E’s not going anywhere, so I might as well pull you gents a pint before you get down to business.’ The superintendent asked for a pint of bitter and Banks, having noticed that the White Rose was a Marston’s house, asked for a pint of Pedigree. ‘’E’s got good taste, I’ll say that for ’im,’ Metcalfe said. ‘Is ’e ’ouse-trained an’ all?’ Banks observed a prudent silence throughout the exchange and took stock of his surroundings. The walls of the lounge bar were panelled in dark wood up to waist height and above that papered an inoffensive dun colour. Most of the tables were the old round kind with cast-iron knee-capper legs, but a few modern square ones stood in the corner near the dartboard and the silent jukebox. Banks lit a Silk Cut and sipped his pint. He’d refrained from smoking in the car in deference to Gristhorpe’s feelings, but now that he was in a public place he was going to take advantage of it and puff away to his heart’s and lungs’ content. Carrying their drinks, they walked over to the table. ‘Someone reported a death?’ Gristhorpe asked, his innocent baby-blue eyes ranging over the five men who sat there. Fellowes hiccuped and put his hand in the air. ‘I did,’ he said, and slid off his chair on to the stone floor. ‘Christ, he’s pissed as a newt,’ Banks said, glaring at Sam Greenock. ‘Couldn’t you have kept him sober till we got here?’ ‘Don’t blame me,’ Sam said. ‘He’s only had enough to put some colour back in his cheeks. It’s not my fault he can’t take his drink.’ Two of the others helped Fellowes back into his chair and Freddie Metcalfe rushed over with some smelling salts he kept behind the bar for this and similar exigencies. Fellowes moaned and waved away the salts, then slumped back and squinted at Gristhorpe. He was clearly in no condition to guide them to the scene of the crime. ‘It’s all right, Inshpector,’ he said. ‘Bit of a shock to the syshtem, thass all.’ ‘Can you tell us where you found this body?’ Gristhorpe spoke slowly, as if to a child. ‘Over Shwainshead Fell, there’s a beautiful valley. All autumn colours. Can’t mish it, just down from where the footpath reaches the top. Go shtraight down till you get to the beck, then cross it . . . Easy. Near the lady’s slipper.’ ‘Lady’s slipper?’ ‘Yes. The orchish, not the bird’s-foot trefoil. Very rare. Body’s near the lady’s shlipper.’ Then he half twisted in his chair and stretched his arm up his back. ‘I left my rucksack,’ he said. ‘Thought I did. Just over from my rucksack, then. Ruckshack marks the spot.’ Then he hiccuped again and his eyes closed. ‘Does anyone know where he’s staying?’ Banks asked the group. ‘He was staying at my guest house,’ Sam said. ‘But he left this morning.’ ‘Better get him back there, if there’s room. He’s in no condition to go anywhere and we’ll want to talk to him again later.’ Sam nodded. ‘I think we’ve still got number five empty, unless someone’s arrived while I’ve been out. Stephen?’ He looked over to the man next to him, who helped him get Fellowes to his feet. ‘It’s Stephen Collier, isn’t it?’ Gristhorpe asked, then turned to the person opposite Greenock. ‘And you’re Nicholas. Remember, I talked to you both a few years ago about Anne Ralston and that mysterious death?’ ‘We remember,’ Nicholas answered. ‘You knew Father too, if I recall rightly?’ ‘Not well, but yes, we bent elbows together once or twice. Quite a man.’ ‘He was indeed,’ Nicholas said. Outside, Banks and Gristhorpe watched Sam and Stephen help Neil Fellowes over the bridge. The old men stood by and stared in silence. Gristhorpe looked up at the fell side. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ he said. ‘Yes?’ ‘It’s a long climb up there. How the bloody hell are we going to get Glendenning and the scene-of-crime team up if we need them? Come to that, how am I going to get up? I’m not as young as I used to be. And you smoke like a bloody chimney. You’ll never get ten yards.’ Banks followed Gristhorpe’s gaze and scratched his head. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose we could give it a try.’ Gristhorpe pulled a face. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’