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if he was going to change it now, even if the walk did sometimes put him out of breath. And even if the new landlord didn’t seem to give a toss for anyone but tourists with plenty of readies to flash around.
    Frank had seen a dozen landlords come and go. He was all right in his way, was old Jacob – a London Jew born of one of the few families lucky enough to escape to England from Germany just before the war – and he had his living to make, but he was a tight old skinflint. A drink or two on the house now and then would make an old man’s pension go a lot farther. The last landlord had understood that. Not Jacob. He was as close with his brass as old Len Metcalfe had been over ten years back.
    Frank pushed the heavy door, which creaked as it opened, and walked across the worn stone flagging to the bar. “Double Bell ’s, please,” he said.
    “Hello, there, Frank,” said Jacob. “How are you today?”
    Frank touched his chest. “Just a twinge or two, Jacob,” he said. “Just a twinge. Other than that I’m right as rain.”
    He took his drink and wandered over to his usual small table to the left of the bar, where he could see down the corridor to the machines and the billiard table on the raised area at the far end. As usual, he said hello to Mike and Ken, who were sitting on stools at the bar agonizing over a crossword puzzle, and to that poncy southern windbag, Clive, who was sitting a stool or two down from them puffing on his bloody pipe and pontificating about sheep breeding, as if he knew a bloody thing about it. A few of the other tables were occupied by tourists, some of them kitted out for a day’s walking or climbing. It was Sunday, after all. And a fine one, at that.
    Frank took a sip of Bell’s, winced at the sharpness and hoped the burning he felt as it went down was just the whiskey, not the final heart attack. Then he remembered the letter he had put in his pocket. He put on his reading glasses, reached his hand in and slipped it out.
    The address was handwritten, and there was no indication of who had sent it. He didn’t recognize the writing, but then he hardly ever saw handwriting these days. Everything you got was typed or done on computers. He couldn’t make out the postmark clearly, either, but it looked like Brighouse, or maybe Bradford. It could even be Brighton or Bristol, for all he knew. Posted on Thursday.
    Carefully, he tore the envelope open and slid out the single sheet of paper. It had type on both sides, in columns, and a large bold heading across the top. At first he thought it was a flyer for a jumble sale or something, but as he read, he realized how wrong he was.
    Confused at first, then angry, he read the printed words. Long before he had finished, tears came to his eyes. He told himself they were Scotch tears, just the burning of the whiskey, but he knew they weren’t. He also knew who had sent him the flyer. And why.

II
    Some of the more modern mortuaries were equipped with video cameras and monitor screens to make it easier for relatives to identify accident or murder victims from a comfortable distance. Not in Eastvale, though. There, the attendant still slid the body out of the refrigerated unit and slipped back the sheet from the face.
    Which was odd, Banks thought, as the mortuary was certainly the most recently renovated part of that drafty old pile of stone known as Eastvale General Infirmary.
    Steven and Josie Fox had at first been unwilling to come and view the body. Banks could see their point. If it
was
Jason, they would have to face up to his death; and if it
wasn’t
, then they would have gone through all the unpleasantness of looking at a badly beaten corpse for nothing.
    Reluctantly, though, they had gone, refusing Banks’s offer of a police car and choosing to walk instead. Susan Gay had returned to the station.
    Because the hospital was small and old and too close to the tourist shops, another, much larger, establishment was under construction on