The Summer That Never Was Read Online Free PDF Page B

remember the exact time, but he was certain that he andPaul were listening to “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” when they saw the Ford Zephyr cruising down the street. It can’t have been the first one, because Graham had been missing since morning, but it was the first one they saw. Paul pointed and started whistling the Z Cars theme music. Police cars weren’t a novelty on the estate, but they were still rare-enough visitors in those days to be noticed. The car stopped at number 58, Graham’s house, and two uniformed officers got out and knocked on the door.
    Banks remembered watching as Mrs. Marshall opened the door, thin cardie wrapped around her despite the warmth of day, and the two policemen took off their hats and followed her into the house. After that, nothing was ever quite the same on the estate.
    Back in the twenty-first century, Banks opened his eyes and rubbed them. The memory had made him even more tired. He’d had a devil of a time getting to Athens the other day, and when he had got there it was only to find that he couldn’t get a flight home until the following morning. He’d had to spend the night in a cheap hotel, and he hadn’t slept well, surrounded by the noise and bustle of a big city, after the peace and quiet of his island retreat.
    Now the plane was flying up the Adriatic, between Italy and the former Yugoslavia. Banks was sitting on the left and the sky was so cloudless he fancied he could see all of Italy stretched out below him, greens and blues and earth colours, from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean: mountains, the crater of a volcano, vineyards, the cluster of a village and sprawl of a large city. Soon he would be landing back in Manchester, and the quest would begin in earnest. Graham Marshall’s bones had been found, and Banks damn well wanted to know how and why they had ended up where they did.
     
    Annie turned off the B-road between Fortford and Relton on to the gravel drive of Swainsdale Hall. Elm, sycamore and ash dotted the landscape and obscured the view of thehall itself until the last curve, when it was revealed in all its splendour. Built of local limestone and millstone grit in the seventeenth century, the hall was a long, two-storey symmetrical stone building with a central chimneystack and stone-mullioned windows. The Dale’s leading family, the Blackwoods, had lived there until they had died out the way many old aristocratic families had died out: lack of money and no suitable heirs. Though Martin Armitage had bought the place for a song, so the stories went, the cost of upkeep was crippling, and Annie could see, as she approached, that parts of the flagstone roof were in a state of disrepair.
    Annie parked in front of the hall and glanced through the slanting rain over the Dale. It was a magnificent view. Beyond the low hump of the earthworks in the lower field, an ancient Celtic defence against the invading Romans, she could see the entire green valley spread out before her, from the meandering River Swain all the way up the opposite side to the grey limestone scars that seemed to grin like a skeleton’s teeth. The dark, stubby ruins of Devraulx Abbey were visible about halfway up the opposite daleside, as was the village of Lyndgarth, with its square church tower and smoke rising from chimneys over roofs darkened by the rain.
    A dog barked inside the house as Annie approached the door. More of a cat person herself, she hated the way dogs rushed up when visitors arrived and barked and jumped at you, slobbered and sniffed your crotch, created chaos in the hall while the apologetic owner tried to control the animal’s enthusiasm and explained how it really was just very friendly.
    This time was no exception. However, the young woman who opened the door got a firm grip on the dog’s collar before it could drool on Annie’s skirt, and another woman appeared behind her. “Miata!” she called out. “Behave! Josie, would you take Miata to the scullery,