The Sentence Is Death

We reached the farm, which was about a mile away to the north, resting against the side of the hill like an old man, with discarded pieces of farm machinery and plastic sacks of animal feed piled up all round. Once again it was Dave Gallivan who knocked on the door but this time he waited until it was opened by a wiry, whip-thin man with grey hair and a straggling moustache, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He was ex-army. I could see it before he spoke a word. It was in the way he stood, the tattoos on his arms, the hardness of his eyes.

‘’Ey up?’ I won’t try to replicate the Yorkshire dialect – it will look ridiculous on the page – but those were his first two words as he carefully examined us.

Gallivan explained who we were and why we’d come.

‘You’d best come inside then.’

The front door led straight into the kitchen, which had a stone floor and nothing of comfort. We sat at the table. He didn’t offer us tea.

‘I knew there were going to be trouble that day,’ he told us. ‘The rain came bucketing down that afternoon and I feared the worst. I took a look out of the window at the stream that runs out the back. It’s bone dry half the year round, but, four o’clock, there was water gushing along. That stream’s a marker if ever there was one.’

‘A conditions marker,’ Gallivan added. ‘There are plenty of them around here. You know not to go caving if there’s so much as a trickle.’

‘That’s what I said to Barbara.’ He glanced upwards, which was presumably where his wife was to be found. ‘I just hoped there was no one stupid enough to be underground. But then, an hour later, there’s a knock at the door and two men come in – in a terrible state, soaking wet, one of them with a bloody nose. It took me a minute or two to recognise Greg Taylor. I didn’t know the chap who was with him. Anyway, they told me what had happened down at Long Way Hole. They’d been trying to fight their way back in to find their friend and they were beside themselves with worry. I got Barbara to make them a drink while I called the police.’

‘Did the two of them say anything more while they were here?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘They said a lot of things but not a lot of it made much sense. The rain was still coming down and we were waiting for cave rescue to arrive. I’ll tell you something, though. Greg was the worse of the two of them. The other chap was silent. He was sitting there like he was haunted or something. But Greg? “This is my fault.” That’s what he said. “This is my fault. This is my fault.” He said it over and over. There was no stopping him.’

‘What happened then?’

‘A police car came and took them away. By that time, Dave and his team were doing what they could, although it was already too late. The last I saw, Greg was staring out of the window like a dead man. But he weren’t the one that died that day.’

‘He’s dead now,’ Gallivan muttered.

‘Aye. So I hear. Maybe it was his reckoning. Who can say? It catches up with us all in the end.’

We had dinner at the Station Inn that evening in a cosy room with low ceilings and varnished beams. A single railway line had been set along the floor next to the bar, acting as a footrest. I could imagine the place heaving in the summer but it was very quiet that evening. In one corner there was a massive fruit machine that sat there like an alien invader, blinking and flickering, but nobody played it. A plump Labrador dog slumbered in its basket.

Hawthorne had asked Gallivan to join us and the three of us sat at a table by the window with views across to another viaduct, a sister to the one I had seen at Ingleton. We had been served gigantic portions of steak and kidney pudding which Hawthorne ate warily, as if he was suspicious of the contents. Gallivan and I had pints of Yorkshire bitter. As usual, Hawthorne had water.

We talked generally for a while – tourism, caving, local gossip – but there was only one reason Hawthorne would have invited Gallivan along and that was because there was something he wanted to know, and sure enough it wasn’t long before he pounced.

‘So maybe you can tell me what it is you’re hiding, Dave?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Gallivan stopped, his fork halfway to his mouth.

‘When we were with Susan Taylor, she mentioned you were at the inquest.’

‘I was.’

‘You told them there was nothing suspicious, nobody to blame.’

‘That was the truth.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Gallivan said nothing, so Hawthorne went on. ‘You were uncomfortable with her and you’re uncomfortable now. I didn’t spend twenty years in the police not to notice when someone’s lying to me. What is it you’re not telling us?’

‘There’s nothing . . .’

‘Two people are dead, Dave. Your mate Greg went under a train. The last person he saw got bludgeoned to death twenty-four hours later. It may be connected to what happened here and I need to know.’

‘All right!’ Gallivan put his fork down. His eyes flared. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it in front of her and I’m not sure I want to tell you now. There’s no proof. Nothing. It’s just a feeling.’