Blood at the Root Read Online Free

tapping her pen against her clipboard, that’s enlightening. “Do they live around here?”
    “Aye. Just over the street.” She pointed. “Number seven. But I only said it
might
be. It’s not a good likeness, you know, love. You ought to get a proper artist working for you. Like my lad, Laurence. Now there’s an artist for you. He sells his prints at the craft center in town, you know. I’m sure he-”
    “Yes, Mrs…?”
    “Ingram’s the name. Laurence Ingram.”
    “I’ll bear him in mind, Mrs. Ingram. Now, is there anything you can tell me about Jason Fox?”
    “The nose isn’t right. That’s the main thing. Very good with noses, is my Laurence. Did Curly Watts from ‘ Coronation Street ’ down to a tee, and that’s not an easy one. Did you know he’d done Curly Watts? Right popular with the celebrities is my Laurence. Oh, yes, very-”
    Susan took a deep breath, then went on. “Mrs. Ingram, could you tell me if you’ve seen Jason Fox around lately?”
    “Not since yesterday. But then he’s never around much. Lives in Leeds, I think.”
    “How old is he?”
    “I couldn’t say for certain. He’s left school, though. I know that.”
    “Any trouble?”
    “Jason? No. Quiet as a mouse. As I said, you hardly ever see him around. But it
does
look like him except for the nose. And it’s easy to get noses wrong, as my Laurence says.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. Ingram,” said Susan, glancing over at number seven. “Thank you very much.” And she hurried down the path.
    “Wait a minute,” Mrs. Ingram called after her. “Aren’t you going to tell me what’s happened? After all the help I’ve given you. Has summat happened to young Jason? Has he been up to summat?”
    If Jason’s the one we’re looking for, Susan thought, then you’ll find out soon enough. As yet, he was only a “possible,” but she knew she had better inform Banks before barging in on her own. She went back to the corner of the street and spoke into her personal radio.

V
    Banks walked quickly through the narrow streets of tourist shops behind the police station, then down King Street toward Daffodil Rise. Beyond the Leaview Estate, the town gradually dissolved into countryside, the sides of the valley narrowing and growing steeper the farther west they went.
    Near Eastvale, Swainsdale was a broad valley, with plenty of room for villages and meadows, and for the River Swain to meander this way and that. But twenty or thirty miles in, around Swainshead, it was an area of high fells, much narrower and less hospitable to human settlements. One or two places, like Swainshead itself, and the remote Skield, managed to eke out an existence in the wild landscape around Witch Fell and Adam’s Fell, but only just.
    The last row of old cottages, Gallows View, pointed west like a crooked finger into the dale. Banks’s first case in Eastvale had centered around those cottages, he remembered as he hurried on toward Daffodil Rise.
    Graham Sharp, who had been an important figure in the case, had died of a heart attack over the summer, Banks had heard. He had sold his shop a few years ago, and it had been run since by the Mahmoods, whom Banks knew slightly through his son, Brian. He had seen them down at the station, too, recently; according to Susan, someone had lobbed a brick through their window a couple of weeks ago.
    In what used to be empty fields around Gallows View, a new housing estate was under construction, scheduled for completion in a year’s time. Banks could see the half-dug foundations scattered with puddles, the piles of bricks and boards, sun glinting on idle cranes and concrete mixers. One or two streets had been partially built, but none of the houses had roofs yet.
    Number seven Daffodil Rise really stood out from the rest of the houses on the street. Not only had the owners put up a little white fence around the garden and installed a paneled, natural pine-look door, complete with a stained-glass windowpane (lunacy, Banks