Unti Peter Robinson #22

by Peter Robinson

  “What ideas?”

  “Oh, about what a waste of time education was, how you should just make your own way, that there was plenty of easy money to be had if you knew how to get it. Christ, I wish to bloody God I’d gone to university when I had the chance.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Denise gave a harsh laugh. “I wanted money in my pocket, the flash life. I couldn’t see the sense in learning some subject I didn’t care about. I wanted holidays abroad, sun and fun. What I got was Frank bloody Lane and the farm. Only myself to blame. But that’s behind me now.”

  “So Morgan was a bad influence on Michael. Is that all you know about him?”

  “He’s . . . I think . . .” She looked away.

  “What is it, Denise?”

  “I think he’s dangerous, too.” She glanced around the coffee shop, as if to make sure no one could hear. Annie didn’t think anyone could. Then Denise lowered her voice. “Or he could be. One time, about three years ago, before things really started to fall apart, Morgan came up to the farm looking for Michael. He wasn’t there. Neither was Frank. I was by myself. Morgan didn’t seem bothered by that, and he started to . . . I don’t know . . . chat me up, I suppose. Then he got more explicit. Said why didn’t we go upstairs, we could have some fun. That I wasn’t bad looking for an old woman, and he could give me a good time. That sort of thing. Thinks he’s God’s gift.”

  Annie felt herself turn cold. “Did he touch you?”

  “Just, you know, he put his hand on my breast, but I slapped him away. I thought then for a moment from the expression on his face that he was going to force me. He looked so angry at being rejected.”

  “But he didn’t do anything?”

  “No. He just left.”

  “And that was the only time?”

  “I wouldn’t have him in the house after that.”

  “Did you tell your husband or Michael?”

  “No. I haven’t told anyone. I felt so dirty, so ashamed, and things were already bad between Frank and me. But I want you to know what kind of person he is. If there’s any trouble, if Michael’s in any sort of bother, then you can bet Morgan Spencer is behind it.”

  “THANKS FOR agreeing to see me at such short notice,” Banks said to Detective Inspector Joanna MacDonald as they sat in a pub on the outskirts of Northallerton waiting for lunch.

  “Any excuse to get out of the office,” Joanna said, smiling. “And you did say you were buying.”

  “How’s it going?”

  Joanna shrugged. “What can I say? The career’s fine. The personal life’s still a bit of a mess. It gets a bit lonely sometimes.”

  Banks knew that Joanna had recently separated from her husband after she had discovered that he was involved in a number of affairs, or flings, as she had called them. He remembered how much it had hurt him when his own ex-­wife, Sandra, had left him for someone else, the betrayal, the sense of being played for an idiot for not seeing it coming, the shame and humiliation.

  “You miss your husband?”

  “Like a bad smell. But to look on the bright side, I’m not in Professional Standards anymore, so everyone doesn’t hate me.”

  Somehow, Joanna didn’t seem so much the icy Hitchcock blonde she had been when Banks had first met her. She was still blond, and still a very attractive woman, but now instead of wearing her hair piled on top, she let it hang straight over her shoulders. She wore black-­rimmed glasses, which suited her and gave her the aspect of a college professor. There was also something warmer and more open about her manner. When they had been on a case in Tallinn together, she had been remote, edgy and quick-­tempered. It was probably a lot to do with working for Professional Standards, Banks knew, and suspecting her husband of infidelity, and he had to admit that he hadn’t exactly welcomed her with open arms. She was the enemy, after all. In fact, he had treated her cruelly, and he now felt childish when he remembered the silly practical jokes he had played on her.

  “You did a damn good job,” Banks said simply.

  Joanna laughed. “Thanks. It might have helped if you’d told me so at the time.”

  “Well, no one likes being under the microscope.”

  “Oh, I was never out to get you. You know that. You just had an exaggerated sense of your own importance, like most men.”

  “Now there’s a generalization if ever I’ve heard one. I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

  Joanna wrinkled her nose and held her thumb and forefinger slightly apart. “Maybe just a little bit. Anyway, you haven’t come all this way only for the pleasure of my company.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “What can I do for you?”

  Banks waited while the server brought their plates of food, warning them to be careful, they were hot. It was typical modern pub grub, haddock and chips and a beef and mushroom pie, also with chips. Banks sipped a pint of Timothy Taylor’s and Joanna stuck to Diet Coke.

  “You’re still working on Operation Hawk, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “I spend most of my waking hours on it. Ever since our new police commissioner made it a priority. Why?”

  Banks explained a little about the missing tractor and the blood found at the abandoned hangar.

  “And you think they’re linked?” Joanna asked.

  “Yes. Not officially, of course, not yet. We don’t have the DNA results, for a start. But we do have a stolen tractor and two ­people of interest who seem to have disappeared. And the timing is just too close to be coincidence.”

  “Are these two local?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you give me their names?”

  Banks told her, and Joanna wrote them down in her notebook. She ate some more fish, then put her knife and fork aside and rested her arms on the table. Banks noticed that the cuffs of her white blouse were a little frayed around her wrists. That wasn’t like the Joanna he had known. Had she let things go? Was she hard up? Perhaps the divorce was costing her in more ways than one. Or maybe she was just working too hard. “As you probably know,” she said, “what we do on Operation Hawk is try to keep track of criminals on the move who strike at rural communities around the country. We also link up with various farm and border watch groups, along with the National Parks Commission, Country Watch and the Farmers’ Union, to spread awareness of the problem. I don’t really see how we can help you much if it’s a local matter. You’d be just as well equipped to deal with something like that as we would.”

  “I understand,” said Banks. “But it’s the national angle I’m interested in. Maybe even international. Who knows? I mean, if someone steals a few sheep, the odds are he’s going to slaughter them locally in an illegal abattoir and sell the meat off the back of a lorry, especially with the price of lamb these days. But if he steals a tractor worth a hundred thousand quid or more, he’s going to whisk it out of the country sharpish. And for that you need organization. Remember Tallinn?”

  “I do remember,” Joanna said, with a tilt of her head. Then she laughed and touched his hand. “Whatever happens, Alan. We’ll always have Tallinn.”

  Definitely not the Joanna Banks he had known. She had changed. She would never have said something like that before.

  “But that was different,” Joanna went on. “It was ­people we were dealing with, not sheep or pigs. Or tractors.”

  “We think the hangar might have been used as an exchange point,” Banks went on. “You know, somewhere the local thieves deliver their goods, whatever they are, make the transfer, and get it on transport brought in specially for the purpose. Then it goes on its way to Bulgaria or wherever. For that, some of the ­people involved have to drive up and down the A1. I understand you’re using ANPR to track the movements of suspects?”

  “You’ve been reading the papers, I can tell,” said Joanna, leaning back in her chair and sipping her Coke. “OK, yes, that’s a part of what we
do.” ANPR stood for automatic number plate recognition, a system of software able to collect number plate data from converted CCTV units on all motorways, major roads and in town and city centers.

  “So you must have some names for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some of your regulars. And don’t tell me Operation Hawk has yielded no results so far. There’s organization involved here, Joanna. Palms to be greased, papers to be forged, that sort of thing. They might use locals for the jobs and for the scouting, but the whole operation’s got to be run by an organized gang. There has to be a brain behind it somewhere. And money.”

  “Fair enough. There’s a few ­people we’re keeping an eye on, though they’re hardly the ones who drive lorries up and down the motorways. We do liaise with the NCA, too, on a regular basis, as well as with other county forces.” The NCA was the National Crime Agency, what the media referred to as the British FBI, which had replaced the Serious Organised Crime Agency. They weren’t primarily concerned with rural crime, as was Operation Hawk, but they were interested in almost everything else except counterterrorism, which remained within the Met’s remit. Slowly but surely, the technology was catching up with the criminals. “The problem is,” Joanna went on, “that we’d need specific locations to know if a certain car or lorry has been regularly spotted on that route. And, as you can imagine, on somewhere like the M1 or the A1 there’s a hell of a lot of normal traffic flow to rule out.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Banks. “But if I give you the location of the hangar, and the closest access points to and from the A1, can you find out whether anyone’s been visiting the place regularly over the past year or so?”

  “We keep the ANPR data for two years, so yes, we can do that. I don’t know about the actual location itself, but certainly the general area. Have you thought, though, Alan, that if some organization is using that corridor, as you suggest, then they’ll be smart enough to know about ANPR, and maybe even about Operation Hawk—­it’s hardly a classified operation, after all. They could avoid detection by using different vehicles. Or different number plates. Or varying their route.”

  “Surely even you lot can spot a false number plate?”

  Joanna laughed. “Sometimes. But there’s a lot of traffic. Not to mention all the foreign vehicles. We can liaise with Interpol and Europol if we need, as well as with forces in specific countries, but that takes time and a finely honed sense of what you want. What you’re talking about just sounds too vague to me. I’m not saying we can’t help. Don’t get me wrong. Just telling you not to expect miracles.”

  “I never have,” said Banks. “Not unless I’ve laid the groundwork for them.” He finished his pie and sipped some beer, then swirled the pale gold liquid in his glass. “If I’m thinking along the right lines,” he went on, “someone might have driven up on Sunday morning. At least that’s when one of our suspects received a text and left his flat in a hurry.”

  “Or down,” said Joanna. “How do you know they didn’t come from Newcastle, or Edinburgh, Glasgow?”

  “Point taken. Or down. But one way or another we’re looking at placing a vehicle, or vehicles, at the abandoned airfield between, say, half past nine and ten o’clock, which means they would have come off the A1 about a mile from the village of Hallerby five minutes earlier. Or from the junction at Thirsk or Northallerton.”

  “You’d be surprised how much data that involves, but I’d say we could probably do it, yes. Remember, though, we’re only interested in specific vehicles. We’ve got a definite location and a specific time frame. What exactly are you looking for?”

  “In the first place, anyone on your list, any of your specific vehicles, anyone suspected of having even the remotest involvement in rural crime on a large scale being spotted at that place and time. Second, anyone you’ve been tracking for some time, anyone who seems to have made an inordinate number of trips up there for no apparent reason. Also, anyone with a criminal record of any kind, especially for violent offenses.”

  “That latter request might be difficult,” Joanna said. “It’s not really within our parameters to check all number plates for convicted criminals. Needless to say, we can’t actually tell you who was driving the car or lorry at the time, just that it passed such and such a location. And it’s not as if we’re out there writing down the numbers of all the cars that pass by. It’s a very specific operation, precise, targeted.”

  Banks slipped out his notebook and gave her Michael Lane’s number plate. “It would help if we could know whether he’d been in the area or not, too,” he said. “And we’re tracking down another number, a large van used for removals. We think it may have been involved in the theft of the tractor.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Joanna. “But, remember, some of these ­people are clever.”

  “Everyone slips up sometime. And it’s just possible that someone might have been in a hurry. It looks as if there was a shooting at the hangar, Joanna. It’s not just a stolen tractor or a few missing sheep now. It could be murder.”

  TERRY GILCHRIST had just put his feet up for an hour’s reading before dinner when the doorbell rang. His leg hurt and he cursed mildly as he got to his feet and went to answer it. He could see only a blurred figure through the frosted glass, but when he opened the door he saw the beautiful black detective standing there. At least he thought she was beautiful. He hoped his mouth hadn’t dropped as far as he felt it had. Since he’d been to war, then invalided back home, he seemed to have lost whatever facility he had ever possessed with the opposite sex. He had certainly had no interest in the brothels of Helmand Province, and opportunities to meet other kinds of women outside the armed forces themselves had been few and far between. Now here stood a woman who probably suspected him of murder. He had been friendly with one of the military investigators out in Helmand, who had worked on the Met as a detective, and he knew they always suspected the person who reported the crime. Still, she was smiling, and that was a good sign. She was casually dressed in jeans and black polo-­neck jumper. Perhaps that was a good sign, too.

  “Come in,” he said, standing aside and gesturing toward the living room.

  “Hope I didn’t disturb anything,” she said. “I have a few more follow-­up questions for you.”

  “Not at all. Just having a sit-­down.” She has an intriguing voice, he thought. At first he had hardly noticed it, as she appeared to speak unaccented English, but if he listened closely he could hear intermingled undertones of Jamaica and Yorkshire. It was a unique blend, and he’d challenge any actor, however skilled, to reproduce it.

  She sat down gracefully, crossing her long legs. He noticed her glancing at his leg as he walked by and used his arms to lower himself back into the armchair.

  “I suppose it could be worse,” she said. “I mean the leg. Worse things than ending up with a slight limp.” He got the impression from her awkward tone that he had embarrassed her by catching her looking at his disability.

  “Much worse. The alternatives hardly bear thinking about. Believe it or not, I’m on the mend. The doctors assure me the stick will go completely soon, but they fear the limp will persist. I don’t mean to complain, but the devil of it is that I’m used to outdoors pursuits. I used to love long-­distance running, golf, tennis, even a little fishing and potholing now and then.”

  “Potholing?” Winsome said. “I used to do that.”

  “Used to? What happened?”

  “I got lost once, and the water was rising. I’m afraid I panicked a bit. It sort of put me off.”

  “I suppose if you stop to think what you’re doing when you’re lost in a cold wet cave a hundred feet under the ground, it might seem like a sort of crazy thing to do.”

  Winsome laughed. He liked her laugh, and that he could make her laugh. “I almost came a cropper,” she went on. “I was in the narrowest section, you know, worming my wa
y through to the ledge overlooking the big cavern at Gaping Gill. When you panic, of course, you just get yourself more stuck. They found me and got me out, of course, but I think I must have lost my nerve after that. I thought there could be a sudden shower and I’d just drown like a . . . well, drown.”

  “It can be very dangerous down there.” Gilchrist sipped his coffee. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Drown.”

  “Oh, yes. Me, too.”

  They both laughed.

  “Perhaps we could go together?” Gilchrist said. “Potholing, that is. When all this is over.” He tapped his leg. “This wouldn’t be much of a hindrance. Maybe I can help you get your nerve back?”

  “Maybe. We’ll have to see.” Her tone sounded clipped, as if she were cutting off the possibility. Gilchrist felt disproportionately disappointed. After all, he hardly knew her. Was it forward to ask a woman you found attractive to go potholing with you? He no longer had any idea about the propriety or etiquette of such things. Best shut up about it and get to the questions she had come to ask him, stick to the point of her visit. To do otherwise would only be to invite grief.

  “Do you remember anything more about those lorries you mentioned?” she asked. “Any markings or anything?”

  Now they were back on familiar terrain, but even this Gilchrist found painful. He used to pride himself on his keen powers of observation and memory—­he would probably have made a good detective himself, his CO had once said—­but since the explosion, his memory seemed to have gone the same way as his leg. He only hoped it would recover as well in time. “I don’t think they had any markings,” he said. “I don’t remember any.”

  “When you saw them, what did you think they were doing there?”

  “I must admit, I had no idea. It’s like when you see all those juggernauts by the roadside at Scotch Corner. Drivers having a nap or something. They have their routines. I know they’re only supposed to drive a limited number of hours per day. They have to sleep somewhere, and it saves on B and B money if they sleep in the cab. These were smaller, so sleeping in the cab was probably out. In the back, maybe.”