He lit a cigarette and shuffled in his seat to get more comfortable. Beside the road, which hugged the steep valley side, the land fell away on his left, a long sheer drop littered with rocky outcrops. It seemed especially dizzying when you were driving south, magnetic, too, as if the edge were calling you over, drawing you to it. Caleb tried to stick close to the center of the road. Sheep grazed and wandered on and off the pavement, which was fenced only sporadically.
Caleb was driving carefully, but he had a schedule to keep, and he was already running late, so perhaps his foot was pressed down a little harder than it should have been. Then again, the faster he got over the pass, the less likely it was that the conditions would worsen while he was up there. At least it wasn’t raining yet, and there was no ice on the road.
Then it happened, it seemed, with the change in direction of one rough blast of wind. The next thing Caleb knew, hailstones as big as marbles were pelting down on the van, almost hard enough to shatter the windscreen. He certainly heard them over the music, and he felt as he imagined a soldier might feel under fire. Instinctively, he found himself hunkering down in his seat, as if he were dodging bullets, wondering if he should pull over until it stopped. Sometimes these storms were blessedly brief. The soothing pastoral of “Grantchester Meadows” played on through the bombardment.
Before he could make his mind up, the hail pellets fell so thickly that for a moment he couldn’t see a thing, only hear the unrelenting rat-a-tat-tat on the metal and glass, and then he saw a dark shadow looming toward him, a frightened sheep running in front of the van, right into his path. He was at one of the steepest points of the pass, and he knew he was still too close to the center of the road. He felt himself hit the sheep before he jerked the steering wheel to avoid what he now saw was an oncoming car, but the combination of hail, shock, speed and lack of visibility disoriented him so much that, before he knew it, he crashed right through the flimsy fence and became airborne.
For a split second, he had the strangest sensation of being free. He had no control. There was nothing he could do. He was floating, cut loose from all that bound him to the world, and it came as a great ecstatic rush of release. But the euphoria soon gave way to panic as the van nose-dived down to the valley bottom with the gentle music still playing and hailstones tapping their staccato rhythm on the metal, Caleb screaming as he scrambled to unfasten his safety belt. Maybe if he jumped . . . ? But he didn’t have time. The van had almost reached the bottom when it hit a huge limestone outcrop square on. The engine block smashed through the dashboard, taking the steering wheel with it, and squashed Caleb in his seat as a wanton boy might squash a fly. Then the van shattered into pieces and scattered itself and its load over the valley bottom.
Before the last scrap of metal had stopped spinning, the hailstorm ended, and the sun lanced through the clouds.
WINSOME AND Gerry Masterson arrived in Hallerby after a morning of paperwork and phone calls, and parked outside the George and Dragon. Winsome glanced around the village. The houses lining the road were mostly modern semis or short terraces, built of redbrick, with a mix of slate and red pantile roofs, the occasional bay window and a touch of pebbledash in evidence. There was no country charm here, though one or two larger detached homes stood back from the road, closer to the riverbank, and seemed older and grander. There was no village green, as everything lay spread out along the roadside: small foursquare chapel, the George and Dragon, a row of shops including a hairdresser, general store and outdoor gear supplier, a community hall and a fish-and-chips shop. The church was behind the row of shops, reached by a narrow ginnel, and Winsome could just see the tips of the tombstones in the cemetery. That was about it for Hallerby. At least the sun was shining, even though there was a definite chill in the air, and on the eastern horizon Winsome could see the Hambleton Hills catching light.
“Where should we start?” asked Gerry.
Winsome nodded toward the pub. “Why not here?” she said. “Let’s take a leaf out of the boss’s book. These places are usually the hub of village gossip. Besides,” she added, “I hate knocking on doors. It makes me feel like a commercial traveler. And the dogs can drive you crazy.”
Gerry smiled. “I remember from my uniform days,” she said.
Winsome gave her an appraising look. Her “uniform” days weren’t far behind, but she was showing excellent promise as a detective, especially in the fields of intelligence gathering and computers. There didn’t seem to be any fact or snippet of information that was beyond the touch of her fingers on a keyboard. It was the other, more human, skills she needed to develop.
“It’s a miracle the place is still open,” said Winsome. “So many village pubs seem to be closing for good these days.”
The interior seemed dark after the bright sunlight, but their eyes soon adjusted. It was a modern pub, not one of those old-fashioned places with lots of brass and heavy varnished wood. The tables were square and made of some sort of black synthetic substance. The chairs had tubular legs. There was even a carpet on the floor. Video machines flashed and winked on the far side of the room. The lunch menu was chalked on a board on the wall and offered the usual pub grub.
“What’ll you have?” Winsome asked.
“Diet bitter lemon, please.”
“Sure you don’t want something a bit stronger?”
“You must be joking,” said Gerry. “If the boss found out we’d been drinking on the job he’d go spare.”
Winsome smiled. “I do hear he’s not averse to a tipple himself now and then.”
Gerry laughed. “Doesn’t matter.”
Winsome ordered two diet bitter lemons and turned to the barman after he had taken the small bottles from the glass-covered refrigerated area. “Are you the landlord?” she asked.
“For my sins. Gordon Fullerton. At your service.”
Winsome flashed him her identification card and introduced Gerry.
“I thought I recognized you from the papers,” Fullerton said. “Aren’t you the—”
“Mind if we ask you a few questions?” Winsome cut in. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s not a social call.”
“There’s not been any trouble, has there? I keep a quiet pub, and you won’t find any after-hours drinking here, either, whether the local bobby’s in or not.”
Winsome thought he was protesting too much, but she wasn’t interested in after-hours drinking. “No, it’s nothing like that. We’re here because of your location.”
“Location?” Fullerton scratched his head, and Winsome noticed a few flakes of dandruff float to the shoulders of his brown cardigan. His wispy grayish hair looked both uncombed and unwashed, though he was otherwise presentable. Clean-shaven, with a small nick on his chin, clear-eyed behind wire-rimmed glasses, not too much of a potbelly, as far as she could see. There were only four other customers in the place, two couples occupying separate tables and engaged in eating their lasagne and chips. If business was always as bad as this, Winsome found herself wondering if the pub could last much longer. There couldn’t be enough drinkers in the village to support it, and people were so scared of drinking and driving these days, they mostly stayed home to drink. Also, money was tight, the economy poor and people tended to buy their home supplies cheaply at Bargain Booze and drink while they watched telly in the evening, instead of going to the local anymore. It was a shame, really, she thought, though she had never been much of a pub-goer herself, a whole tradition slowly dying. But times change. Nowadays it was all city center wine bars and gastropubs, for those who could afford them, and a taxi home.