The Hanging Valley by Peter Robinson Page B

Fletcher. I’d met them the previous day when I was enquiring about the best places to search for wild flowers.”
    “Did it seem to you as if they were all in on some kind of conspiracy?”
    “I’m not a paranoid, if that’s what you’re getting at, Chief Inspector.”
    “But you were upset. Sometimes our senses can over-react.”
    “Believe what you wish. I simply thought you ought to know.
    And in answer to your question, no, I didn’t sense any gigantic conspiracy, just that someone at the table knew something.”
    “But you said you thought a glance was exchanged.”
    “That’s what it felt like.”
    “So more than one person knew?”
    “I suppose so. I can’t say how many or how I received the impression. It just happened.”
    Banks took his notebook out again and wrote down the names. “I don’t want to get anybody into trouble,” Fellowes said. “I could be wrong. It could have happened just as you said, an over-reaction.”
    “Let us worry about that, Mr Fellowes. We don’t usually ask people to stand up in a court of law and swear to their feelings. Is that all you can tell me?”
    “Yes. Will I be able to go home now? There’ll be trouble at work if I’m not back tomorrow.”
    “Better give me your address and phone number in case we need to talk to you again,” Banks said.
    Banks made a note of Fellowes’s address and left, thinking what a celebrity the man would be at work for a while. He went out of the open door without seeing Katie Greenock and breathed in the fresh air by the beck. A young man dangled his legs over the bank, eating a sandwich from grease-proof paper and reading a thick paperback; the old men still huddled around the eastern end of the stone bridge; and there were three cars parked outside the White Rose. Banks looked at his watch: twenty past one. With a bit of luck the same crowd as yesterday would be there. He read over the names Fellowes had given him again and decided to make a start.
    III
    First things first, Banks thought, and headed for the bar. He ordered Cumberland sausage, beans and chips, then paid, took his numbered receipt, and waited while Freddie Metcalfe poured him a pint of Pedigree.
    “Is tha getting anywhere?” Metcalfe asked, his biceps bulging as he pulled down on the pump.
    “Early days yet,” Banks answered.
    “Aye, an’ it got to late days an’ all last time, and still tha didn’t find owt.”
    “That’s how it goes sometimes. I wasn’t here then.”
    “Thinks tha’s better than old Gristhorpe, does tha, eh?”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    “From down sahth, aren’t tha?”
    “Yes. London.”
    “London.” Metcalfe placed the foaming brew on the cloth in front of Banks and scratched his hairy ear. “Bin there once. Full o’ foreigners, London. All them A-rabs.”
    “It’s a busy place,” Banks said, picking up his beer.
    “Don’t get many o’ them arahnd ’ere. Foreigners, that is. That why tha came up ’ere, to get shut on t’A-rabs, eh? Tha’ll find plentyo’ Pakis in Bradford, like, but I don’t reckon as I’ve ever seed a darkie in Swainshead. Saw one in Eastvale, once.”
    Banks, growing quickly tired of Metcalfe’s racist inanities, made to turn away, but the landlord grabbed his elbow.
    “Don’t tha want to ask me any questions then, lad?” he said, his eyes glittering.
    Holding back his temper, Banks lit a cigarette and propped himself up against the bar. He had noticed that the three men he recognized from the previous day were only into the upper thirds of their pints, so he had enough time to banter with Metcalfe. He might just pick up some interesting titbit.
    “What do you want me to ask you?” he opened.
    “Nay, tha’s t’bobby. Tha should know.”
    “Do you get many walkers in here?”
    “Aye. We don’t fuss ’em abaht rucksacks and boo-its and what-not like that stuck-up pillock on t’main road.”
    “But I understand this is the ‘select’ part of town?”
    “Aye.”