Alot of people, Banks mused, thought that the police attended the funerals of murder victims in the hope of finding the killer there. They didn’t. That only happened in books and on television. On the other hand, given that a victim’s close relatives were likely to be at the funeral, and given that by far the largest percentage of murders were committed by close family members, then the odds were pretty good that the murderer would be at the funeral.

Not this one, though. Barry Clough wasn’t there, for a start, and he was the closest they had to a suspect so far, even though Riddle was probably right about Emily being of far more value to him alive. Was Banks wearing blinkers when it came to Clough, or was he going off half-cocked, as Gristhorpe had warned him against doing? He didn’t think so. He knew it didn’t make sense for Clough to kill Emily just after he had used her to attempt to blackmail her father, but he was sure there must be something he was missing, some angle he hadn’t considered yet. The only thing he had thought of, but didn’t really believe in, was that Clough was some sort of psychopath and simply hadn’t been able to stop himself. If that had been the case, he would have made damn sure he was there to watch and participate in Emily’s murder.

Craig Newton and Ruth Walker had traveled up together; they stood looking puzzled and miserable in the rain as the vicar intoned the Twenty-third Psalm. Banks caught their eyes; Craig gave him a curt nod and Ruth gave him a dirty look.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.” There was nothing green about the Dales pastures that morning – everything, from sky to houses to the unevenly shaped fields and drystone walls was a dull slate-gray or a mud-brown – nor was there anything still about the River Swain, which tumbled over a series of small waterfalls beside the graveyard and, along with the wind screaming through the gaps in the drystone wall like a Stockhausen composition, almost drowned out the vicar’s words. The wind also drove the rain hard across the churchyard, and the mourners seemed to draw as deeply into their heavy overcoats, gloves and hats as they could.

At least the vicar was using the old version, Banks noticed. “The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing” had about as much resonance as “as in a mirror, dimly,” he thought. Not that he went to church very often, but like many people, he remembered the powerful church language of his youth and anything less fell far short. He hadn’t known what half of it meant, either then or now, but it never seemed to matter; religion, he thought, was mostly a matter of mumbo-jumbo, anyway. Chants, mantras, whatever. Comforting mumbo-jumbo, in this case, though nobody was fooled. Rosalind Riddle dabbed at her eyes with a white hanky every now and then, Benjamin stood next to her, looking confused, and her husband looked as if he had been up all night grappling with his conscience.

When Riddle caught Banks’s eye briefly on the way out to the graveside, he looked away guiltily. And well he might, thought Banks, who still felt a residue of anger toward him for stalling the investigation. He had realized after his interview with Riddle the previous day, though, that he had also been guilty of hiding too many things; he hadn’t told Annie about the lunch with Emily at first, and he still hadn’t told her about the night in the hotel room. With any luck now, she wouldn’t find out about that. Of course, he could rationalize his own shortcomings a lot more easily than he could Riddle’s, but he could at least understand why Riddle might not like to admit to him that he had kept a dinner engagement with his daughter’s lover, a man who also happened to have a criminal reputation. Would Riddle have capitulated with whatever Clough wanted from him in order to protect himself and Emily? What kind of man was he when it came to the crunch? He would never have the chance to find out now. Virtue can’t prove itself until it’s tested.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” The valley of the shadow of death was a phrase that had always moved Banks, sent a shiver up his spine, though he would have been hard-pressed to explain what it meant to him. It was one phrase they hadn’t got rid of in the new translation, too. He thought of poor Graham Marshall all those years ago, walking through the valley of the shadow of death. They had never found his body, so he never had a funeral like Emily. There had been some sort of memorial service at school, Banks remembered, or a remembrance service, he wasn’t sure which. The headmaster had recited the Twenty-third Psalm. So much death. Sometimes his head seemed full of the voices of the dead.

Banks found himself wishing the funeral would soon be over. It wasn’t only the weather, the rain dripping down the back of his neck and the wet, cold wind that cut right through three layers of clothing to the bone, but the sight of the coffin perched at the graveside ready to be lowered, knowing that Emily was in there, the once-vital, mischievous spirit who had curled up and slept like a little child with her thumb in her mouth in a hotel room once, with him sitting in the chair listening to Dawn Upshaw’s song about sleep. Cold, cold is the grave, a line from an old folk ballad passed through his mind. The grave looked cold indeed, but the only one not feeling it now was Emily.

When it was over, the body lowered into its final resting place, people started drifting toward the car park. Ruth and Craig approached the Riddles. The chief constable seemed oblivious to them, and Craig hung back. Ruth said something to Rosalind, something that looked deeply earnest. Rosalind uttered a few words and touched her arm. Then Rosalind saw Banks alone and walked over to him with an elderly couple in tow.

“My mother and father,” she said, introducing them.

Banks shook their hands and offered his condolences.

“Are you coming to the house?” Rosalind asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t. Too much work.” He could probably have spared half an hour or so, but the truth was that he didn’t fancy making small talk with the Riddle family. “What did Ruth want?” he asked.

“Oh, so that’s who it is,” said Rosalind. “I wondered. She said she was a friend of Emily’s and wondered if she might have some sort of keepsake.”

“And?”

“I suggested she drop by the house and I’d see what I could do. Why?”

“No reason. The boy with her’s Craig Newton. Emily’s ex-boyfriend.”

“Is he a suspect?”

“Technically, yes. He pestered her after they split up, and he doesn’t have an alibi.”

“But realistically?”

Banks shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

Rosalind glanced over at the two of them. “Then I suppose I should invite them both back to the house, shouldn’t I?”

“They’ve come a long way.”

“How did they know it was today?”

“I phoned Craig last night. The last time I interviewed him he said he’d like to be there, and I could see no reason why not. He must have contacted Ruth.”

Rosalind shook Banks’s hand and walked over with her mother and father toward Ruth’s car. Banks also saw Darren Hirst and the others who had been in the Bar None with Emily on the night of her death, Tina and Jackie. They all looked shell-shocked. Darren nodded and walked by. That reminded Banks of a glimmer of an idea he’d had, something he wanted to ask Darren. Not now, though; it would keep. Leave the poor lad to his grief for a while.

Back at the office, before Banks could even get his overcoat off and sit down, DS Hatchley knocked on his door and entered.

“How’s it going, Jim?” Banks asked.

“Fine. The funeral?”