Banks sighed. The guessing game. He had played it often enough before. You walk in about ten minutes after opening time and ask for something on the menu, only to be told that it’s “off.” After about four or five alternatives, also declared “off,” you finally find something that they just might have. If you’re lucky.

This time Banks went through tandoori chicken and chips, venison medallions in a red wine sauce and chips, and fettucine Alfredo and chips before striking gold: beef and Stilton pie. And chips. He hadn’t been eating much beef for the past few years, but he had stopped worrying about mad-cow disease lately. If his brain was going to turn to sludge, there wasn’t much he could do to stop it at this stage. Sometimes it felt like sludge already.

DS Cabbot ordered a salad sandwich, no chips.

“Diet?” Banks asked, remembering the way Susan Gay used to nibble on rabbit food most of the time.

“No, sir. I don’t eat meat. And the chips are cooked in animal fat. There’s not a lot of choice.”

“I see. Drink?”

“Like a fish.” She laughed. “Actually, I’ll have a pint of Swan’s Down Bitter. I’d recommend it very highly. It’s brewed on the premises.”

Banks took her advice and was glad that he did. He had never met a vegetarian beer aficionado before.

“I’ll bring your food over when it’s ready, dearies,” the woman said. Banks and DS Cabbot took their pints over to a table by the open window. It looked out on the twilit green. The scene had changed: a group of teenagers had supplanted the old men. They leaned against tree trunks smoking, drinking from cans, pushing and shoving, telling jokes, laughing, trying to look tough. Again, Banks thought of Brian. It wasn’t such a bad thing, was it, neglecting his architectural studies to pursue a career in music? It didn’t mean he’d end up a deadbeat. And if it was a matter of drugs, Brian had probably had enough opportunities to try them already. Banks certainly had by his age.

What really bothered him was his realization that he didn’t really know his son very well anymore. Brian had grown up over the past few years away from home, and Banks hadn’t seen much of him. Truth be told, he had spent far more time and energy on Tracy. He had also had his own preoccupations and problems, both at work and at home. Maybe they were on the wane, but they certainly hadn’t gone away yet.

If DS Cabbot felt uncomfortable with Banks’s brooding silence, she didn’t show it. He fished out his cigarettes. Still not bad; he had smoked only five so far that day, despite his row with Brian and Jimmy Riddle’s phone call. Cutting out the ones he usually had in the car was a good idea. “Do you mind?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Sure?”

“If you’re asking whether it’ll make me suffer, it will, but I usually manage to control my cravings.”

“Reformed?”

“A year.”

“Sorry.”

“You needn’t be. I’m not.”

Banks lit up. “I’m thinking of stopping soon myself. I’ve cut down.”

“Best of luck.” DS Cabbot raised her glass, took a sip of beer and smacked her lips. “Ah, that’s good. Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“No.”

She leaned forward and touched the hair at his right temple. “What’s that?”

“What? The scar?”

“No. The blue bit. I didn’t think DCIs went in for dye jobs.”

Banks felt himself blush. He touched the spot she had indicated. “It must be paint. I was painting my living room when Jimmy Riddle phoned. I thought I’d washed it all off.”

She smiled. “Never mind. Looks quite nice, actually.”

“Maybe I should get an earring to go with it?”

“Better not go too far.”

Banks gestured out of the window. “Get much trouble?” he asked.

“The kids? Nah, not a lot. Bit of glue-sniffing, some vandalism. Mostly they’re bored. It’s just adolescent high spirits.”

Banks nodded. At least Brian wasn’t bored and shiftless. He had a direction he passionately wanted to head in. Whether it was the right one or not was another matter. Banks tried to concentrate on the job at hand. “I called my sergeant on the way here,” he said. “He’ll organize a SOCO team to dig out the bones tomorrow morning. A bloke called John Webb will be in charge. He’s studied archaeology. Goes on digs for his holidays, so he ought to know what he’s doing. I’ve also phoned our odontologist, Geoff Turner, and asked him to have a look at the teeth as soon as it can be arranged. You can phone around the universities in the morning, see if you can come up with a friendly forensic anthropologist. These people are pretty keen, as a rule, so I don’t think that’ll be a problem. In the meantime,” he said as his smoke curled and twisted out of the window, “tell me all about Thornfield Reservoir.”

DS Cabbot leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs at the ankles, resting the beer glass against her flat stomach. She had swapped her red wellies for a pair of white sandals, and her jeans rode up to reveal tapered ankles, bare except for a thin gold chain around the left one. Banks had never seen anyone manage to look quite so comfortable in a hard pub chair. He wondered again what she could possibly have done to end up in such a godforsaken outpost as Harkside. Was she another of Jimmy Riddle’s pariahs?

“It’s the most recent of the three reservoirs built along the River Rowan,” she began. “Linwood and Harksmere were both created in the late-nineteenth century to supply Leeds with extra water. It’s piped from the reservoirs to the big waterworks just outside the city, then it’s purified and pumped into people’s homes.”

“But Harksmere and Thornfield are in North Yorkshire, not West Yorkshire. West Riding, I suppose it was back then. Even so, why should they be supplying water to Leeds?”

“I don’t know how it came about, but some sort of deal was struck between North Yorkshire and the Leeds City Council for the land use. That’s why we’re not part of the park.”

“What do you mean?”

“Rowandale. Nidderdale, too. We’re not part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, though we should be if you go by geography and natural beauty. It’s because of the water. Nobody wanted to have to deal with National Parks Commission’s rules and regulations, so it was easier just to exclude us.”

Like Eastvale, Banks thought. Because it was just beyond the park’s border, the severe building restrictions that operated inside the Yorkshire Dales National Park didn’t apply. Consequently, you ended up with monstrosities like the East Side Estate, with its ugly tower blocks and maisonettes, and the new council estate just completed down by Gallows View: “Gibbet Acres,” as everyone was calling it at the station.

Their meals arrived. Banks stubbed out his cigarette. “What about Thornfield?” he asked after he had swallowed his first bite. The pie was good, tender beef and just enough Stilton to complement it. “How long has it been there? What happened to the village?”

“Thornfield Reservoir was created in the early fifties, around the time the national parks system was established, but the village had already been empty a few years by then. Since the end of the war, I think. Used to have a population of around three or four hundred. It wasn’t called Thornfield; it was called Hobb’s End.”

“Why?”

“Beats me. There’s no Hobb in its history, as far as anyone knows, and it wasn’t the end of anything – except maybe civilization as we know it.”

“How long was the village there?”

“No idea. Since medieval times, probably. Most of them have been.”

“Why was it empty? What drove people away?”

“Nothing drove them away. It just died. Places do, like people. Did you notice that big building at the far west end?”

“Yes.”

“That was the flax mill. It was the village’s raison d’être in the nineteenth century. The mill owner, Lord Clifford, also owned the land and the cottages. Very feudal.”