After viewing the spot where Charlie Courage’s body had been discovered, just off a muddy track in some woods near Husbands Bosworth, they attended the post-mortem in Market Harborough hospital.
Courage’s body had already been photographed, fingerprinted, weighed, measured and X-rayed the previous day. Now, the pathologist, Dr Lindsey, and his assistants worked methodically and patiently through a routine they must have carried out many times. Lindsey began with a close external examination, paying special attention to the gunshot pattern.
‘Definitely a shotgun wound,’ he said. ‘Twelve-bore, by the look of it. Range about two or three yards.’ He pointed out the central entrance opening over the heart and the numerous single small holes around it from the scattered shot. ‘Any closer and it would have been practically circular. Much farther away and the shot would have spread out more into smaller groups. There’s still some wadding embedded in the wounds, too. Look.’ He held up a piece. ‘Depends whether they used a sawn-off, of course, as the shot patterns don’t hold as far. Even so, it was pretty close range. And judging by the angle of the main wounds, it looks as if either his killer was very tall or the victim was on his knees at the time.’
Banks guessed that if he was right in assuming Charlie had been taken for the long ride, then his killer would have used a sawn-off shotgun. The legal length for shotgun barrels was twenty-four inches, not including the stock, and no villain would walk or drive around with something that big.
‘Then there’s this bruising,’ Dr Lindsey went on, pointing out the discoloration around Courage’s stomach and kidneys. ‘It looks as if he was beaten either with fists or some hard object before he was killed. Enough to make him piss blood for a week at least.’
‘Perhaps somebody wanted him to tell them something?’ Collaton said.
‘From what I knew of Charlie, he’d give up his grandmother if you so much as waved your fist in his face. They might have wanted him to tell them something, but my bet is that he did, and then they carried on beating him up just for the fun of it.’
Next, Dr Lindsey began his dissection with the Y-incision. He took blood samples, then removed and inspected the inner organs, working from the trachea, oesophagus and what was left of the heart, down to the bladder and spleen.
As all this was going on, Banks kept a close eye on Annie. He didn’t know how good she was at post-mortems on fairly fresh corpses, as the last one they had been to was of a skeleton disinterred after fifty years. Though she paled a little when Dr Lindsey opened up the body cavity and swallowed rather loudly as he squished out the various organs as if he were shelling oysters, she stood her ground.
Until, that is, the power saw started ripping into the front quadrant of the skull. At that, Annie swayed, put her hand to her mouth and, making a gurgling sound, dashed out of the room. Dr Lindsey rolled his eyes and Collaton glanced at Banks, who just shrugged.
Dr Lindsey pulled out the brain, looked it over, tossed it from hand to hand as if it were a grapefruit, then put it aside for weighing and sectioning.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘until we get the tests back on the blood and tissue samples, we won’t know whether he was poisoned before he was shot. I doubt it, myself. Judging by the blood, I’d say the gunshot wound was the cause of death. It blew his heart open. And going by the lividity, I’d also say he was killed at the same spot he was found.’
‘Did you determine time of death?’ Banks asked, though he knew it was the question all pathologists hated the most.
Dr Lindsey frowned and searched through a pile of notes on the lab bench. ‘I made some rough calculations at the scene. Only rough, of course. I’ve got them somewhere. Now, where . . . ah here it is. Rigor, temperature . . . allowing for the chilly weather and the rain . . . he was found on Tuesday, that’s yesterday, at about four p.m., and I surmised he’d been dead at least twenty-four hours, perhaps longer.’
Charlie had been seen by his neighbour on Sunday afternoon at around two o’clock, and if he had been killed sometime on Monday afternoon, that left over twenty-four hours, the last twenty-four hours of his life, unaccounted for. When they got back to Eastvale, Banks would have to initiate some house-to-house inquiries in the neighbourhood, find out if anyone had seen Charlie later than Sunday lunchtime, and if anyone had seen him with anyone. He hadn’t got to the lane near Husbands Bosworth in his own car, and he certainly hadn’t walked there. The fresh tyre tracks that Collaton’s men had found most likely belonged to the car that had taken him there, as the lane was an out-of-the-way place. Depending on how good the impressions were, it might be possible to match them up with a particular car – if, of course, they found the car, and if the tyres hadn’t been changed.
They had learned just about all they could from Dr Lindsey for the moment, and Banks thanked him for his prompt post-mortem and left with Collaton, looking out for Annie as he walked along the corridors.
They found her standing out in the misty, grey afternoon taking deep breaths. When she saw them, she looked away and ran her hand over her chestnut hair. ‘Christ. I’m sorry. I feel such an idiot.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Banks. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘It’s not that I haven’t been to one before.’ She pulled a face. ‘I was okay, honest I was, until . . . It was the smell, the saw burning the bone, and the noise it made. I couldn’t . . . I’m sorry. I feel like such a fool.’
It was the first time Banks had seen any real break in Annie’s on-the-job composure. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. Are you up to going home?’
She nodded. He imagined it would be a quiet journey. Annie was clearly pissed off at herself for showing signs of weakness.
Banks looked at Collaton. The indulgent expression on his face indicated he would probably have forgiven Annie anything.
It was late when Banks finally got home, after calling in at the station to issue some actions for the following morning. The traffic on the M1 was murder, especially around Sheffield, and patches of dense fog on the A1 meant they had to move at a crawl, keeping in view the rear lights of the lorry in front of them. Banks was reminded of the time when he was lost in the fog, heading for a friend’s house, and had blindly followed the car in front right into a private drive. He had been damned embarrassed when the irate driver came to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing.
Annie recovered from her little spell of embarrassment a lot quicker than Banks expected. He had to remind himself that this wasn’t Susan Gay, and that Annie didn’t worry so much about appearing weak or incompetent; she simply got on with her work and her life.
The fog in the dale slowed him down most on the last leg of his journey. Wraiths of grey mist nuzzled up the daleside and swirled on the road before him. The road ran several feet up the hillside from the valley bottom, where the River Swain meandered through the Leas, and most of the fog had settled low. Banks knew the road well enough not to take too many foolish risks.
Back at the cottage, he found two messages waiting. The first was from Tracy, asking him for ideas about what she should buy her mother for Christmas. A wedding dress, perhaps? Banks thought. But he wouldn’t say that to Tracy.
The next caller didn’t identify herself, but he knew immediately who she was: ‘Hello, it’s me. Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch . . . it was probably very rude of me . . . I mean, I never really thanked you and all, did I, you know, for what you did for me? I suppose I was pretty fucked up.’ There, she broke off and Banks could hear her suck on a cigarette and blow out the smoke. He thought he could hear background noise, too. ‘Anyway, you must let me buy you lunch at least. Hey, look, I’ll be over in Eastvale tomorrow, so why don’t you meet me at the Black Bull on York Road over from Castle Hill, say about one o’clock? Is that all right?’ There was a silence on the line, as if she was actually expecting an answer. Then she sighed. ‘Okay, then, hope to see you tomorrow. And I’m sorry. Really, I am. Ciao.’
Banks rem
embered the last time he had seen Emily, at the door of the old mill house, in the pink track suit he had bought for her on Oxford Street, an outfit she obviously loathed, giving him that enigmatic look as he delivered her to her parents. He remembered Jimmy Riddle’s clipped thanks and Rosalind’s cool silence. It was all unspoken, but he had sensed Riddle’s awkward, hidden love for his daughter and Rosalind’s distance.
So Emily Riddle wanted to thank him. Should he go? Yes, he thought, reaching for the bottle of Laphroaig; hell, yes, he would go.
6
The Black Bull was a young people’s pub at night, with live music and a steady supply of illegal drugs, mostly Ecstasy and crystal meth. It had been targeted by the Eastvale police’s ‘Operation Pubwatch’ on more than one occasion, never without a few arrests being made. At lunchtime, though, it had a totally different character, and most of the customers worked in the various offices and shops along York Road. The only music issued quietly from the jukebox, and the only drugs being consumed were nicotine and alcohol, with a little caffeine for those who preferred tea or coffee with their pie and chips.
When Banks arrived spot on one o’clock, Emily was nowhere in sight. He bought himself a pint and found a table near the window. The road outside was busy, and the traffic splashed up dirty water from the roadside puddles.
As he was studying the blackboard and trying to decide between Bar BQ Chicken and Thai Red Curry, Emily breezed in, out of breath, the way Jenny Fuller always seemed to do, as if it had been a great effort getting there only fifteen minutes late. She plonked her bulging handbag on the chair besides Banks, gave him an impish grin and made for the bar. When she came back, she was carrying one of those strange cocktails that young drinkers, especially female, seem to think are really interesting: in this case, Kahlua and Coke. She must have charmed the landlord into believing she was old enough to drink, Banks thought, though in all honesty she did look well over eighteen. She had a cigarette in her mouth almost before she sat down, a manoeuvre Banks was surprised she could make given that her slightly flared blue jeans looked painted on. Still, it was a testament to Emily’s natural style that she didn’t look in the least bit tarty, and she had chosen to wear no make-up at all. Not that she needed any. Once she had lit her cigarette and had taken a sip of her drink, she shuffled off her mid-length jacket to reveal a black silk blouse. After she had tidied her hair, she seemed ready to talk, but she kept on fidgeting.
There were moments when Banks looked at her and saw a sophisticated young woman looking back, wise enough in the ways of the world to exploit them for her own ends. Other times, he saw a gauche, nervous teenager, unable to look an adult in the eye. She was still too close to her childhood to recognize its value. When you were Emily’s age, Banks remembered, all you wanted to do was enter that magical world of privilege and freedom you saw all around you – adulthood. Hence the smoking, the drinking, the sex. You didn’t realize until much, much later – too late, some might say – that the privileges and freedoms you coveted came with a very high price tag indeed.
‘Have you decided yet?’ she asked.
‘Decided what?’
‘What you’re having for lunch. It’s my treat. I told you on the phone.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I know. Daddy probably paid you well already for bringing me home. But I want to.’
‘I’ll have the Thai Red Curry, then.’ Banks didn’t usually go for exotic food in pubs, but the Bull had a good lunchtime reputation. ‘And he didn’t pay me anything.’
She raised a neatly plucked eyebrow.
‘Just so you know.’
Emily paused, then said, ‘All right.’ She gestured for the woman delivering food at the next table to come over and started to give her order. The woman frowned, told her to order it herself at the bar, then stalked off.
‘Get her,’ said Emily, pulling a face. Kid again.
Banks scraped his chair against the stone floor. ‘I’ll go.’ He didn’t want her to have to go through the agony of getting up and sitting down again; wearing those jeans, she might rupture her spleen or her bladder.
‘No.’ She jumped to her feet with surprising agility. ‘I told you I’d get it.’
Banks watched her walk to the bar, taller than ever in her platform heels, and noticed all the men’s eyes were on her body. There wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t do anything for her. Or to her. The women, however, turned up their noses in distaste and cast disapproving frowns in Banks’s direction. What the hell, Banks asked himself, was he doing sitting in a pub with the chief constable’s daughter, who was definitely breaking one law by drinking under age – if you could call Kahlua and Coke a real drink – and God knows how many other laws simply by the way she looked? It was fortunate that none of the men could be arrested for their fantasies. Not yet.
‘Done.’ Emily sat again and plucked her cigarette out of the ashtray. ‘At least they’ll bring it to the bloody table. You don’t have to get up and fetch it yourself. Honestly, the service industry in this country.’
Banks wondered how many other countries she had experienced and realized it was probably more than his own daughter had. Chief constables were always getting junkets to America, Belgium, South Africa or Peru. He wondered if the service in Peru was better than that in Yorkshire. Probably.
‘What are you having?’ he asked.
‘Me? Nothing. I don’t eat lunch.’
‘Nor dinner either, by the look of you.’
‘Now, now. Remember, you didn’t disapprove of “the look of me” too much in that hotel room.’
So she did remember. Banks felt himself blush, and it got all the worse when he saw Emily was laughing at him. ‘Look—’ he said, but she waved him down.
‘Don’t worry. I haven’t told Daddy.’ She pouted and wiggled her shoulders. ‘Besides, it’s the waif look. Most older men like it. Don’t you?’
‘What about boys your own age?’
She snorted. ‘They’re so immature. Oh, they’re all right for dancing and buying you drinks and stuff, but that’s about all. All most of them can talk about is football and sex.’ She licked her cherry lips. ‘I prefer older men.’
Banks swallowed. He could see where that came from: a father who was never there, someone she desperately wanted to love and be loved by. ‘Like Barry Clough?’ he said.
A shadow crossed her fine porcelain features. ‘That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about,’ she said. Then her face brightened into a smile. ‘But first I really do want to thank you. I mean it. I know I wasn’t very nice at the time, but I appreciate what you did, taking care of me like that. I was really fucked up. Big time.’
‘Do you remember much about it?’
‘In the hotel room? Yes. Until I fell asleep. You were the perfect gentleman. And the next morning you went and bought me a track suit. A pink one. It was ugly, but that was sweet of you. I’m sorry I wasn’t very friendly on the way home, but I was really down.’
‘Thai curry?’
The woman held out a dish of steaming curry. Banks admitted to ownership, and she set it down, narrowly avoiding spilling it on the table, gave Emily a hard glare and walked off.
‘What is her problem?’ Emily said. ‘I mean, really! The stupid cow.’
‘She doesn’t like you,’ said Banks. ‘She doesn’t like the way you treated her, and I’d guess she doesn’t like your looks much, either.’
‘What the fuck do I care if she likes my looks?’
‘You asked. I’m simply telling you.’
‘Anyway, what’s she supposed to be here for if not to serve people food? It’s not as if she’s not getting paid or anything.’
‘Look,’ said Banks. ‘I’m not going to argue. It’s not her job to take orders, and you’ve got a pretty snotty attitude, when it comes right down to it.’ Banks dipped into his curry. It was good and hot.
Emily glared at him for a few seconds, sulking, then started fidgeting wit
h the large ring on her right index finger. ‘Stupid old bitch,’ she muttered.
Banks ignored her and tucked in, easing the heat with an occasional swig of beer. He finished the pint quicker than he had intended to and, before he could stop her, Emily had jumped to her feet and bought him another one. It was the barmaid who served her this time, not the landlord, and Banks noticed them talking, Emily taking something out of her handbag and showing it to her.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked when she came back.
‘Nothing,’ she said, putting the drinks down. ‘Christ, this place is in the fucking Dark Ages.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I only asked for a TVR, didn’t I, and do you think the sad bitch behind the bar had any idea what I was talking about?’
‘I can’t say I have any idea what you’re talking about, either.’
Emily looked at him as if he came from another planet. ‘Well, I had to explain it to her, too. It’s tequila, vodka and Red Bull. Great stuff, gives you a real alcohol high without all that slurring and stumbling. Me and . . . well, you know who . . . we used to drink it in the Cicada Dust in Clerkenwell.’
‘And?’
She pulled a face. ‘What do you think?’
‘They didn’t have it?’
‘Of course they didn’t.’
‘So what did you settle for?’
‘A Snowball.’
Banks had heard of that one: advocaat and lemonade. He had thought it long out of fashion. He remembered that his mother sometimes used to drink a Snowball at Christmas when he was a kid. Just the one, usually, as she was never much of a drinker. ‘Mmm, it’s good.’ Emily held out the glass. ‘Want a sip?’
‘No, thanks. Have you been in touch with any of the crowd down there? Ruth?’
Emily shook her head. ‘Not much.’
‘Craig said Barry’s minders beat him up outside a pub in Soho while you looked on laughing.’
‘The lying bastard.’
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