Jelačić shrugged. “Maybe he did. Maybe court was wrong.”
“But more important even than Owen Pierce’s suffering is Ellen Gilchrist’s life. If it hadn’t been for you, Ive Jelačić, that girl might not have had to die.”
“I tell you before. In my country, many people die. Nobody ca-”
Banks slammed his fist on the flimsy table. “Shut up! I don’t want to hear any more of your whining self-justification and self-pity, you snivelling little turd. Do you understand me?”
Jelačić’s eyes were wide open now. He nodded and glanced over at Gristhorpe for reassurance he wasn’t going to be left alone with this madman. Gristhorpe remained expressionless.
“Because of you, an innocent girl was brutally murdered. Now, I might not be able to charge you with murder, as I would like to do, but I’ll certainly get something on you that’ll put you away for a long, long time. Understand me?”
“I want lawyer.”
“Shut up. You’ll get a lawyer when we’re good and ready to let you. For the moment, listen. Now, I don’t think we’ll have much trouble getting Daniel and Rebecca Charters to testify that you tried to extort money from them in order to alter the story you told against Daniel Charters. That’s extortion, for a start. And we’ll also get you for tampering with evidence, wasting police time and charges too numerous to mention. And do you know what will happen, Ive? We’ll get you sent back to Croatia is what.”
“No! You cannot do that. I am British citizen.”
Banks looked at Gristhorpe and the two of them laughed. “Well, maybe that’s true,” Banks said. “But you do know who Deborah Harrison’s father is, don’t you? He’s Sir Geoffrey Harrison. A very powerful and influential man when it comes to government affairs. Even you must know something of the way this country’s run, Ive. What would you say for your chances now?”
Jelačić turned pale and started chewing his thumbnail.
“Are you going to co-operate?”
“I know nothing.”
Banks leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “Ive. I’ll say this once more and then it’s bye-bye. If you don’t tell us what you know and where you found the diary, then I’ll personally see to it that you’re parachuted right into the middle of the war zone. Clear?”
Jelačić sulked for a moment, then nodded.
“Good. I’m glad we understand one another. And just because you’ve behaved like a total pillock, there’s one more condition.”
Jelačić’s eyes narrowed.
“You drop all charges against Daniel Charters and make a public apology.”
Jelačić bristled at this, but after huffing and puffing for a minute or two, agreed that he had, in fact, misinterpreted the minister’s gesture.
Banks stood up and took Jelačić’s arm. “Right, let’s go.”
They drove him to St. Mary’s, and he led them along the tarmac path, onto the gravel one and into the thick woods behind the Inchcliffe Mausoleum. A good way in, he paused in front of a tree and said, “Here.”
Banks looked at the tree but could see nothing out of the ordinary, no obvious hiding-place. Then Jelačić reached his hand up and seemed to insert it right into the solid wood itself. It was then that Banks noticed something very odd about the yew trees. Not very tall, but often quite wide in circumference, they were hard, strong and enduring. Some of the older ones must have been thirty feet around and had so many clustered columns they looked like a fluted pillar. The one they stood before had probably been around since the seventeenth century. The columns were actually shoots pushing out from the lower part of the bole, growing upwards and appearing to coalesce with the older wood, making the tree look as if it had several trunks all grafted together. It also, he realized, provided innumerable nooks and crannies to hide things. What Deborah had sought out for a hiding-place, and Jelačić had seen her use, was a knot-hole in this old yew, angled in such a way that it was invisible when you looked at it straight on.
Banks moved Jelačić aside and reached his hand inside the tree. All he felt was a bed of leaves and strips of bark that had blown in over the years. But then, when he started to dig down and sweep some of this detritus aside, he was sure his fingers brushed something smooth and hard. Quickly, he reached deeper, estimating that Deborah could have easily done the same with her long arms. At last, he grasped the package and drew it out. Gristhorpe and Jelačić stood beside him, watching.
“Looks like you missed the jackpot, Ive,” Banks said.
It was a small square object wrapped in black bin-liner, folded over several times for good insulation. When Banks unfolded it, he brought out what he had hoped for: a computer diskette.
III
Back at the station, Banks handed the floppy disk to Susan Gay and asked her if she could get a printout of its contents. He hoped it had survived winter in the knot-hole of the yew. It should have done; it had been wrapped in plastic and buried under old leaves, wood chips and scraps of bark, which would have helped preserve it, and the winter hadn’t been very cold.
Ten minutes later, Susan knocked sharply on Banks’s office door and marched in brandishing a sheaf of paper. Her hand was shaking, and she looked pale. “I think you’d better have a look at this, sir.”
“Let’s swap.” Banks pushed the diary towards her and picked up the printout.
De-bo-rah. De-bo-rah. How the syllables of your name trip off my tongue like poetry. When was it I first knew that I loved you? I ask myself, can I pinpoint the exact moment in time and space where that magical transformation took place and I no longer looked at a mere young girl but a shining girl-child upon whose every movement I fed hungrily. When, when did it happen?
Oh, Deborah, my sweet torturer, why did I ever, ever have to see you pass that moment from childhood to the flush of womanhood? Had you remained a mere child I could never have loved you this way. I could never have entertained such thoughts about your straight and hairless child’s body as I do about your woman’s body.
I seek you out; yet I fly from you. On the surface, all appears normal, but if people could see and hear inside me the moment you come into a room or sit beside me, they would see my heart pulling at the reins and hear my blood roaring through my veins. That day you won the dressage and walked towards me in your riding-gear, that moist film of sweat glistening on the exquisite curve of your upper lip…and you kissed me on the cheek and put your arm around me…I felt your small breast press softly against my side and it was all I could do to remain standing let alone furnish the required and conventional praise…well done…well done…wonderful…well done, my love, my Deborah.
The first time I saw you naked as a woman you were standing in the old bath-tub at Montclair looking like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Remember, my love, there were no locks on the doors at Montclair. One simply knew when private rooms were engaged and refrained from entering. Mistakes were made, of course, but honest mistakes. Besides, it was family. They aren’t prudes about such things, the French, Sylvie’s people. I hoped only for a brief glimpse of your nakedness as you bathed. I knew I couldn’t linger, that I must apologize and dash out as if I had a made a mistake before you even realized I had seen you. So fast, so fleeting a glimpse. And even now I wonder what would have happened had I not witnessed you in your full glory.
For you were standing up, reaching for the towel, and your loveliness was on display just for me. Steam hung in the air and the sunlight that slanted through the high window cast rainbows all about you. Droplets of moisture had beaded on your flushed skin; your wet hair clung to your neck and shoulders, long strands pasted over the swellings of your new breasts, where the nipples, pink as opening rosebuds stood erect. Even that early in womanhood your waist curved in and swelled out at the narrow hips. Between your legs a tiny triangle of hair like spun gold lay on the mound of Venus; the paradise I dream of; drops of water had caught among the fine, curled hairs, forming tiny prisms in the sunlight; some just seemed to glitter in clear l
ight like diamonds…
I have other images locked away inside me: the thin black bra strap against your bare shoulder, the insides of your thighs when you cross your legs…
And so it went on. Again, it wasn’t solid evidence, but it was all they had. Banks had no choice but to act on it.
IV
Owen gazed out of the train window into the darkness. Rain streaked the dirty glass and all he could see was reflections of the lights behind him in the carriage. He wished he could get another drink, but he was on the local train now, not the InterCity, and there was no bar service.
As the train rattled through a closed village station on the last leg of his journey, Owen thought again of how he had walked the London streets all night in the rain after killing Michelle, half-hoping the police would pick him up and get it over with, half-afraid of going back to prison, this time forever.
He had covered the whole urban landscape, or so it seemed; the west end, where the bright neons were reflected in the puddles and the nightclubs were open, occasional drunks and prostitutes shouting or laughing out loud; rain-swept wastelands of demolished houses, where he had to pick his way carefully over the piles of bricks with weeds growing between them; clusters of tower blocks surrounded by burned-out cars, playgrounds with broken swings; and broad tree-lined streets, large houses set well back from the road. He had walked through areas he wouldn’t have gone near if he had cared what happened to him, and if he hadn’t been mugged or beaten up it wasn’t for lack of carelessness.
But nothing had happened. He had seen plenty of dangerous-looking people, some hiding furtively in shop doorways or hanging around in groups smoking crack in the shadows of tower-block stairwells, but no-one had approached him. Police cars had passed him as he walked along Finchley Road or Whitechapel High Street, but none had stopped to ask him who he was. If he hadn’t known different, he would have said he was leading a charmed life.
At one point, close to morning, he had stood on a bridge watching the rain pit the river’s surface and felt the life of the city around him, restful perhaps, but never quite sleeping, that hum of energy always there, always running through it like the river did. He didn’t think it was Westminster Bridge, but still Wordsworth’s lines sprung into his mind, words he had read and memorized in prison:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theaters, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Well, perhaps the air wasn’t exactly “smokeless,” Owen thought, but one has to make allowances for time.
Owen felt tired and empty. So tired and so empty.
Eastvale Station was in the north-eastern part of the town, on Kendal Road a couple of miles east of North Market Street. It was only a short taxi-ride to the town center. But Owen didn’t want to go to the center, or, tired as he was, home.
He was surprised the police weren’t waiting for him at the station, as they probably would be at his house. He didn’t want to walk right into their arms, and however empty he felt, however final every second of continued freedom seemed, he still didn’t want to give it up just yet. Perhaps, he thought, he was like the cancer patient who knows there’s no hope but clings onto life through all the pain, hoping for a miracle, hoping that the disease will just go away, that it was all a bad dream. Besides, he wanted another drink.
Whatever his reasons, he found himself walking along Kendal Road. The day had been so hot and humid that the cooler evening air brought a mist that hung in the air like fog. At the bridge, he looked along the tree-lined banks towards town and saw the high three-quarter moon and the floodlit castle on its hill reflected in the water, all blurry in the haze of the summer mist.
Walking on, he came to the crossroads and saw the Nag’s Head. Well, he thought, with a smile, it would do as well as anywhere. He had come full circle.
V
By the time Banks and Gristhorpe got Chief Constable Riddle’s permission to bring Michael Clayton in for questioning, which wasn’t easy, it was already dark. One of the conditions was that Riddle himself be present at the interview.
Banks was pleased to see that Clayton, as expected, was at least mildly intimidated by the sparse and dreary interview room, with its faded institutional-green walls, flyblown window, table and chairs bolted to the floor, and that mingled smell of urine and old cigarette smoke.
Clayton made the expected fuss about being dragged away from his home, like a common criminal, to the police station, but his confidence had lost a bit of its edge. He was wearing sharp-creased gray trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt; his glasses hung on a chain around his neck.
“Are you charging me with something?” Clayton asked, folding his arms and crossing his legs.
“No,” said Gristhorpe. “At least not yet. Chief Inspector Banks has a few questions he wants to ask you, that’s all.”
Jimmy Riddle sat behind Clayton in the far corner by the window, so the suspect couldn’t constantly look to him for comfort and reassurance. Riddle seemed folded in on himself, legs and arms tightly crossed. He had promised not to interfere, but Banks didn’t believe it for a moment.
“About what?” Clayton asked.
“About the murder of your goddaughter, Deborah Harrison.”
“I thought you’d finished with all that?”
“Not quite.”
He looked at his watch. “Well, you’d better tell him to get on with it, then. I’ve got important work to do.”
Banks turned on the tape recorders, made a note of the time and who was present, then gave Clayton the new caution, the same one he had given Owen Pierce eight months ago. Formalities done, he shuffled some papers on the desk in front of him and asked, “Remember when we talked before, Mr. Clayton, and I asked you if you had been having an affair with Sylvie Harrison?”
Clayton looked from Gristhorpe to Banks. “Yes,” he said to the latter. “I told you it was absurd then, and it’s still absurd now.”
“I know.”
Clayton swallowed. “What?”
“I said I know it’s absurd.”
He shook his head. “So you’re not still trying to accuse me of that? Then why…?”
“And remember I suggested that Deborah might have gained access to some sensitive business material, or some government secret?”
“Yes. Again, ridiculous.”
“You’re absolutely right. You weren’t having an affair with Sylvie Harrison,” Banks said slowly, “and Deborah didn’t gain access to any important government secrets. We know that now. I got it all wrong. You were in love with your goddaughter, with Deborah. That’s why you killed her.”
Clayton paled. “This…this is ludicrous.” He twisted around in his chair to look at Riddle. “Look, Jerry, I don’t know what they’re talking about. You’re their superior. Can’t you do something?”
Riddle, who had read both the diary and the computer journal, shook his head slowly. “Best answer the questions truthfully, Michael. That’s best for all of us.”
While Clayton was staring open-mouthed at Riddle’s betrayal, Superintendent Gristhorpe dropped the printed computer journal on the table in front of him. Clayton first glanced at it, then put his glasses on, picked it up and read a few paragraphs. Then he pushed it aside. “What on earth is that?” he asked Banks.
“The product of a sick mind, I’d say,” Banks answered.
“I hope you’re not suggesting it has anything to do with me.”
Banks leaned forward suddenly, snatched back the pages and slapped them down on the table. “Oh, stop mucking us about. It came from your computer. The one John Spinks stole that day he took your car. He’s already told us all about that, about how he saw Deborah make a copy of the files onto a diskette. You didn’t know about that, did you?”
“I…where…?”
“She kept it well
hidden. Look, you know it’s your journal. Don’t deny it.”
Even in his shock, Clayton managed a thin smile and rallied his defenses. “Deny it? I most certainly do. And I’m afraid you’ll have a hard job proving a wild accusation like that. Your suggestions are outrageous.” He glanced back at Riddle. “And Jerry knows it, too. There’s absolutely nothing to link that printout with me. It could have been written by anyone.”
“I don’t think so,” said Banks. “Oh, I know that Deborah reformatted your hard drive well beyond anything an ‘unerase’ or ‘undelete’ command could bring back to life, but you must admit the contents of the journal, the circumstances, all point to you. Very damning.”
“Fiction,” said Clayton. “Pure fiction and fantasy. Just some poor lovestruck fool making things up. There’s nothing illegal in that. There’s no law against fantasies; at least not yet.”
“Maybe not,” said Banks. “We never checked Deborah’s clothing for your hairs, you know.”
“So?”
“You might not have left any blood or tissue, but I’m willing to bet that if we went over the hair samples again now, we’d find a positive match. That wouldn’t be fantasy, would it?”
Clayton shrugged. “So what? It wouldn’t surprise me. Deborah was my goddaughter, after all. We spent a lot of time together-as a family. Besides, I was in court for the so-called expert’s testimony. Hairs hardly prove a thing scientifically.”
“What about Ellen Gilchrist?”
“Never heard of-wait a minute, isn’t that the other girl who was killed?”
“Yes. What if we found your hairs on her clothing, too, and hers on yours? Was she family, a friend?”
Clayton licked his lips. “I never saw her in my life. Look, I don’t know what grounds you’ve got for assuming this, but-”
Banks dropped a photocopy of Deborah’s diary in front of him. “Read this,” he said.
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