Free In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson Page B

what should I do next year?”
    Banks smiled. “I’m sure you can conscript one of your PC s to help. If we don’t get a break soon, I’ll see what I can do about manpower, though somehow I doubt this is a high-priority case.”
    â€œThank you, sir.”
    â€œFor now, let’s concentrate on the identity of the victim. That’s crucial.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œJust a thought, but, do you happen to know if there’s anyone who lived in Hobb’s End still alive, maybe living in Harkside now? It doesn’t seem an unreasonable assumption.”
    â€œI’ll ask Inspector Harmond. He grew up around these parts.”
    â€œGood. I’ll leave you to it and see these bones off to Leeds with John.”
    â€œDo you want me to go down there this evening?”
    â€œIf you like. Meet me at the lab at six o’clock. Know where it is?”
    Annie nodded. “Dr Williams explained over the phone.” She told Banks.
    â€œIn the meantime,” he said, “here’s my mobile number. Give me a ring if you come up with anything.”
    â€œRight you are, sir.” Annie seemed to just touch her sunglasses and they slid down perfectly into place on her nose. With that, she turned and strode off into the woods.

    Banks was an odd fish, Annie thought as she drove back to Harkside. Of course, before she’d met him she’d heard a few rumours. She knew, for example, that Chief Constable Riddle hated him, that Banks was under a cloud, almost lost in the clouds, though she didn’t know why. Someone had even hinted at fisticuffs between the two. Whatever the reason, his career was on hold and he was not a good horse to hitch one’s wagon to.
    Annie had no particular liking for Jimmy Riddle, either.
    On the one or two occasions she had met him, she had found him arrogant and condescending. Annie was one of Millie’s projects— ACC Millicent Cummings, new Director of Human Resources, dedicated to bringing more women into the ranks and seeing that they were well treated—and the antagonism between Millie and Riddle, who had opposed her appointment from the start, was well known. Not that Riddle was especially for the ill-treatment of women, but he preferred to avoid the problem altogether by keeping their presence among the ranks to an absolute minimum.
    Annie had also heard that Banks’s wife had left him for someone else not too long ago. Not only that, but there were stories going around that he had a woman in Leeds, had had for some time, even before his wife left. She had heard him described as a loner, a skiver and a Bolshy bastard. He was a brilliant detective gone to seed, they said, over the hill since his wife left, past it, burned out, a shadow of his former self.
    On first impressions, Annie didn’t really know what to make of him. She thought she liked him. She certainly found him attractive, and he didn’t look much older than his mid-thirties, despite the scattering of grey at the temples of his closely cropped black hair. As far as being burned out was concerned, he seemed tired and he seemed to carry a burden of sadness in him, but she could sense that the fire still smouldered somewhere behind his sharp blue eyes. A little diminished in power, perhaps, but still there.
    On the other hand, perhaps he really had lost it, and he was simply going through the motions, content to shuffle paper until retirement. Perhaps the fire she sensed in himwas simply embers, not fully extinguished yet, just about to cave in on themselves. Well, if Annie had learned one thing over the past couple of years, it was not to jump to conclusions about anyone: the brave man often appears weak; the wise man often seems foolish. After all, enough people thought she was weird, too, and it wouldn’t be hard to argue that she been merely going through the motions lately, either. She wondered if there were any rumours about her going around the