In a Dry Season Read Online Free PDF

Leicester Square.
    A small choir was singing “Men of Harlech” just beside the Burger King. How it had all changed: the fast-food places, the shops, even the cinemas. It wasn’t far from here, on Haymarket, that she had been to her first London cinema, the Carlton. What had she seen? For Whom the Bell Tolls . Of course, that was it.
    As she walked back to the Leicester Square tube entrance, Vivian thought again about the strange man in the bookshop. She didn’t like to dwell on the past, but he had pushed her into a reminiscent mood, as had the recent newspaper photographs of the dried-up Thornfield Reservoir.
    The ruins of Hobb’s End were exposed to the light of day for the first time in more than forty years, and the memories of her life there had come crowding back. Vivian shuddered as she walked down the steps to the underground.

Two
    B anks paused for breath after his walk through the woods. From where he stood on the edge of Thornfield Reservoir, the entire elongated bowl of ruins lay open below him like a cupped hand, about a quarter of a mile wide and half a mile long. He didn’t know the full story, but he knew that the site had been covered with water for many years. This was its first reappearance, like an excavated ancient settlement, or a sort of latter-day Brigadoon.
    On the opposite embankment, he could see tangles of tree roots sticking out of the slope. The difference in soil colours showed where the water-line had been. Beyond the high bank, Rowan Woods straggled away to the north.
    The most dramatic part of the scene lay directly below: the sunken village itself. Bracketed by a ruined mill on a hillock to the west, and by a tiny pack-horse bridge to the east, the whole thing resembled the skeleton of a giant’s torso. The bridge formed the pelvic bone, and the mill was the skull, which had been chopped off and placed slightly to the left of the body. The river and high street formed the slightly curving backbone, from which the various ribs of side streets branched off.
    There was no road surface, but the course of the old High Street by the river was easy enough to make out. Iteventually forked at the bridge, one branch turning towards Rowan Woods, where it soon narrowed to a footpath, and the other continuing over the bridge then out of the village along the Harksmere Reservoir embankment, presumably all the way to Harkside. It struck Banks as especially odd that there should have been a fully intact bridge there, under water for all those years.
    Below him, a group of people stood by the other side of the bridge, one of them in uniform. Banks scampered down the narrow path. It was a warm evening, and he was sweating by the time he got to the bottom. Before approaching the group, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow and the back of his neck. There was nothing he could do about the damp patches under his arms.
    He wasn’t overweight, or even especially unfit. He smoked, he ate lousy food and he drank too much, but he had the kind of metabolism that had always kept him lean. While he didn’t go in for strenuous exercise, since Sandra left he had got into the habit of taking long, solitary walks every weekend, and he swam half a mile at the Eastvale public baths once or twice a week. It was this damn hot weather that made him feel so out of shape.
    The valley bottom wasn’t as muddy as it looked. Most of the exposed reddish brown earth had been caked and cracked by the heat. However, there were some marshy patches with reeds growing out of them, and he had to jump several large puddles on his way.
    As he crossed the pack-horse bridge, a woman walked towards him and stopped him in the middle. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, arm extended, palm out. “This is a crime scene. I’m afraid you can’t come any further.”Banks smiled. He knew he didn’t look like a DCI . He had left his sports jacket in the car and wore a blue