Plot
DCI Banks has been on holiday in Umbria, Italy, meeting his girlfriend Oriana's family. He is due back on Tuesday but calls into work a day early. DC Gerry Masterson says, "You're a glutton for punishment, sir". When talking to a witness, a retired policeman who says, "Why keep working any longer than you have to". DI Annie Cabott thinks of Banks: "They'd have to drag him kicking and screaming out of his office soon. Or would he get a newer, bigger office and an extra five year's grace if he got promoted to Superintendent, as Gervaise had promised last November"?
Annie investigates "a bloody stolen tractor... Is this why I put in all those years to make DI"? DC Dougal Wilson says, "it's rural crime... a major crime... according to the new police commissioner". It is "worth over a hundred K". The crime is linked to a human bloodstain found in a hangar at a disused wartime aerodrome, and ties into a local criminal ring run by the tractor owner who is an ex-city financier. Beddowes is a "hobby" farmer, not a "real" farmer according to the locals. When a lorry carrying corpses of fallen farm animals for incineration crashes off the isolated Belderfield Pass, amongst the animal remains there is a dismembered human body, probably that of a missing petty criminal from the criminal ring. Vegetarian DI Annie has to investigate the local (legitimate) abattoirs.
Richard "Dirty Dick" Burgess helps Banks out in London as "Operation Hawk" is targeting rural crime. After talking to Burgess who tells him that the London mastermind has "coughed" to save himself, Banks feels defeated then realises that was "the way of the world... there'll always be a Dirty Dick Burgess", but it was a win for them. He realised earlier that Burgess was "one of his few remaining friends". Banks finds an hours-old note from DS Winsome Jackman saying she is off to the isolated High Point Farm and wants backup. Banks rushes there and is told Winsome has hidden in the Swainsdale cave system, which she knows, as she is a keen potholer. She had found an illegal abattoir; the villain chases her but gets stuck in the caves and dies of hypothermia.
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