The Hanging Valley
More Acclaim for
The Hanging Valley
“A terrific book with a complex plot about murder and madness in the Yorkshire dales.”
—
The Globe and Mail
“A superior detective ... A superior writer.”
—Denver Post
“[Peter Robinson] knows how to write an extremely good mystery and keep the reader hopping from page to page.”
—
The Hamilton Spectator
“Evocative ... Intriguing ... Emotionally rich.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Complex and unexpected ... Stylish prose and lean, dramatic storytelling.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Acclaim for
Gallows View
“An extremely well-fashioned police procedural.”
—New York Times Book Review
“The climax, choreographed to a furious pace, should fill the land with the sound of pages turning.”
—
Toronto Star
“This is a first novel that will knock you over with its maturity.”
—Howard Engel
“Alan Banks shows promise of developing into the kind of avuncular copper that fans of Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford love.”
—
The Globe and Mail
Acclaim for
A Necessary End
“
A Necessary End
is proof that Robinson has his craft well in hand … The perfect weekend escape.”
—
The Globe and Mail
“Well-written, and with a rich and varied cast of believable characters,
A Necessary End
is Robinson’s best novel to date.”
—
The London Free Press
“A good mystery and a contemporary variation … With the publishing of
A Necessary End
, I think we can now be assured that we have a series that is going to be with us for a long time to come.”
—
The Vancouver Sun
Acclaim for
A Dedicated Man
“A perfect little portrait of a village in the Yorkshire dales … First-rate stuff for the detective story buff.”
—
The Province
(Vancouver)
“A first class story.”
—
Toronto Star
“
A Dedicated Man
is a satisfying sequel to Robinson’s first published novel,
Gallows View
. The slow pace and delightful characterizations allow the narrator to expound on the lives and mores of rural Yorkshire without interrupting the flow of the story or the reader’s absorption.”
—
Quill & Quire
PENGUIN CANADA
THE HANGING VALLEY
PETER ROBINSON
grew up in Leeds, Yorkshire. He emigrated to Canada in 1974 and attended York University and the University of Windsor, where he was later writer-in-residence. His many awards include five Arthur Ellis Awards, the Edgar Award for best short story, The Crime Writers’ Association’s Dagger in the Library Award, the Torgi talking book of the year, France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and Sweden’s Martin Beck Award. His books have been published internationally to great acclaim and translated into fifteen languages. Peter Robinson lives in Toronto.
Other Inspector Banks mysteries
Gallows View
A Dedicated Man
A Necessary End
Past Reason Hated
Wednesday’s Child
Final Account
Innocent Graves
Dead Right
In a Dry Season
Cold is the Grave
Aftermath
The Summer That Never Was
Playing with Fire
Strange Affair
Piece of My Heart
Inspector Banks collections
Meet Inspector Banks
(includes
Gallows View, A Dedicated Man
and
A Necessary End
)
Inspector Banks Investigates
(includes
The Hanging Valley, Past Reason Hated
and
Wednesday’s Child
)
The Return of Inspector Banks
(includes
Innocent Graves, Final Account
and
Dead Right
)
Also by Peter Robinson
Caedmon’s Song
No Cure for Love
Not Safe After Dark
THE
HANGING VALLEY
Peter Robinson
For Jan
PENGUIN CANADA
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1989
Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1990
Published in this edition, 2006
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)
Copyright © Peter Robinson, 1989
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance
to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Manufactured in Canada.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Robinson, Peter, 1950–
The hanging valley : an Inspector Banks mystery / Peter Robinson.
ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305103-9
ISBN-10: 0-14-305103-2
I. Title.
PS8585.O35176H36 2006 C813’.54 C2006-901657-7
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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PART ONE:
MOTION IN
CORRUPTION
ONE
I
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 1631 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 guide books 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 when 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.