“James Francis McCallum,” Michelle said. “He went missing from a mental institution near Wisbech on Thursday, June seventeenth, 1965.”
“That would be about right,” said Banks.
“McCallum hadn’t been involved in any violent activity, but the doctors told us that the possibility always existed, and that he might be dangerous.”
“When was he caught?” Banks asked.
Michelle glanced at Shaw before answering. He gave her a curt nod. “That’s just it,” she went on. “He wasn’t. McCallum’s body was fished out of the River Nene near Oundle on the first of July.”
Banks felt his mouth open and shut without any sound coming out. “Dead?” he managed.
“Dead,” echoed Shaw. He tapped his pen on the desk. “Nearly two months before your friend disappeared. So you see, DCI Banks, you’ve been laboring under an illusion for all these years. Now, what I’m really interested in is why you lied to me and DI Proctor in the first place.”
Banks felt numb from the shock he had just received. Dead. All these years. The guilt. And all for nothing. The man who assaulted him on the riverbank couldn’t have abducted and killed Graham. He should have felt relieved, but he only felt confused. “I didn’t lie,” he muttered.
“Call it a sin of omission, then. You didn’t tell us about McCallum.”
“Doesn’t seem as if it would have mattered, does it?”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Look, I was just a kid. I hadn’t told my parents because I was scared how they’d react. I was upset and ashamed by what happened. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know, but that’s how I felt. Dirty and ashamed, as if it was somehow my fault for inviting it.”
“You should have told us. It could have been a lead.”
Banks knew that Shaw was right; he had told reluctant witnesses the same thing himself, time after time. “Well, I didn’t, and it wasn’t,” he snapped. “I’m sorry. Okay?”
But Shaw wasn’t going to be so easily put off, Banks could tell. He was enjoying himself, throwing his weight around. It was the bully mentality. To him, Banks was still the fourteen-year-old kid whose budgie had just flown out the door. “What really happened to your friend?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
Shaw scratched his chin. “I remember thinking at the time that you knew something, that you were holding something back. I’d like to have taken you to the station, had you down in the cells for an hour or so, but you were a minor, and my senior officer Reg Proctor was a bit of a softie, when it came right down to it. What really happened?”
“I don’t know. Graham just disappeared.”
“Are you sure you and your mates didn’t set on him? Maybe it was an accident, things just went too far?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m suggesting that maybe the three of you ganged up on Graham Marshall for some reason and killed him. These things happen. Then you had to get rid of the body.”
Banks folded his arms. “And tell me how we did that.”
“I don’t know,” Shaw admitted. “But I don’t have to. Maybe you stole a car.”
“None of us could drive.”
“So you say.”
“It wasn’t the way it is today, with ten-year-olds behind the wheel.”
“Is that how it happened? A fight broke out and Graham got killed? Maybe fell and smashed his skull, or broke his neck? I’m not saying you intended to kill him, but it happened, didn’t it? Why don’t you come clean with me, Banks? It’ll do you good to get it off your chest after all these years.”
“Sir?”
“Shut up, DI Hart. Well, Banks? I’m waiting.”
Banks stood up. “You’ll have a bloody long wait, then. Good-bye.” He walked toward the door. Shaw didn’t try to stop him. Just as Banks had turned the handle, he heard the superintendent speak again and turned to face him. Shaw was grinning. “Only teasing, Banks,” he said. Then his expression became serious. “My, but you’re sensitive. The point I want to make is that you’re on my turf, and it turns out you can’t help us any more now than you could all those years ago. So my advice to you, laddie, is to bugger off back up to Yorkshire, go shag a sheep or two, and forget about Graham Marshall. Leave it to the pros.”
“Bloody good job the pros did last time,” said Banks, leaving and slamming the door behind him, annoyed at himself for losing his temper, but unable to prevent it. Outside the station, he kicked a tire, lit a cigarette and got in his car. Maybe Shaw was right and he should just head back up north. He still had over a week’s holiday left and plenty to do around the cottage, whereas there was nothing more he could do down here. Before driving off, he sat for a moment trying to digest what Michelle and Shaw had told him. His guilt over the years had been misplaced, then; McCallum was in no way responsible for Graham’s abduction and, by extension, neither was Banks. On the other hand, if he had reported the incident, there was a chance that McCallum might have been apprehended and hospitalized instead of drowning. More guilt, then?
Banks cast his mind back to that hot June afternoon by the river and asked himself if McCallum would have killed him. The answer, he decided, was yes. So sod the bastard, and sod guilt. McCallum was a dangerous loony and it wasn’t Banks’s fault he’d fallen in the fucking river and drowned. Good riddance.
Turning up the volume on Cream’s “Crossroads,” he sped out of the police car park, daring one of the patrol cars to chase him. Nobody did.
They all looked tired, Annie thought, as the Armitage team gathered in the boardroom of Western Area Headquarters late that morning. The boardroom was so called because of its long polished table, high-backed chairs and paintings of nineteenth-century cotton magnates on the walls, red-faced, eyes popping, probably because of the tight collars they were wearing, Annie thought. As works of art, the paintings were negligible, if not execrable, but they lent authority to the room.
Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe sat at the head of the table and poured himself a glass of water. Also present were DCs Templeton, Rickerd and Jackman, and Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley, still clearly uneasy with Annie’s promotion over him. But as Banks had told Annie more than once, Jim Hatchley was born to be a sergeant, and a damn good one, too. There wasn’t much Hatchley didn’t know about the shady side of Eastvale. He had a network of informers second only to his network of pub managers and landlords, who all kept an eye on criminal comings and goings for him, and his tiredness was probably due to the fact that his wife had just given birth to their second child a couple of weeks ago. It was the three DCs who had borne the brunt of the previous night’s surveillance.
“So we’re not much further ahead,” Gristhorpe opened.
“No, sir,” said Annie, who at least had managed her quick pint in Relton, then gone home for a bath and a few hours’ sleep before arriving back at the station shortly after dawn. “Except we’ve checked with the phone company and got Luke’s records. We’ll be tracking down all the people he phoned over the last month, though there aren’t many. The ransom call to Martin Armitage was the only call made after Luke’s disappearance, the only call made that day, and it was local. Wherever Luke is, he’s not far away, or he wasn’t on Tuesday evening.”
“Anything else?”
“We’ve got a fair idea of Luke’s movements until five-thirty the day he disappeared.”
“Go ahead.”
Annie walked over to the whiteboard and listed the times and places as she mentioned them. She knew the details by heart and didn’t need to consult her notebook. “He arrived at the bus station by the Swainsdale Centre at a quarter to three. The bus driver and several of the passengers remember him. We’ve been looking at some of the closed-circuit TV footage, and he walked around the center for a while, went into W.H. Smith’s, then into HMV, but he didn’t appear to buy anything. That takes us up until half past three. He appeared in that small computer shop on North Market Street at a quarter to four, which is about right
, as he was on foot. He stayed there half an hour, trying out some games, then he visited the music shop at the corner of York Road and Barton Place.”
“Did anyone notice anything unusual about his state of mind?” Gristhorpe asked.
“No. Everyone said he just seemed normal. Which, I guess, was pretty weird to start with. I mean, he wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.”
“And next?”
“The used-book shop on the market square.” Annie walked over to the window and pointed. “That one down there. Norman’s.”
“I know it,” said Gristhorpe. “What did he buy?”
“Crime and Punishment and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Right up Gristhorpe’s alley, Annie thought.
Gristhorpe whistled. “Pretty heavy going for a fifteen-year-old. What next?”
“That was it. He walked out of the market square CCTV range at half past five, and we haven’t found anyone who admits to seeing him since. Oh, and he was also seen talking to a group of lads in the square after coming out of the bookshop. It looked as if they were ragging him. One of them took the parcel of books from his hand and they tossed it around to one another while he flailed around trying to get it back.”
“What happened in the end?”
“One of them threw it to him and they went off laughing.”
“Classmates?”
“Yes. We’ve had a chat with them. At least DC Templeton has.”
“Nothing there, sir,” said Templeton. “They’ve all got alibis.”
“Which direction did he walk off in?” Gristhorpe asked.
“Down Market Street. South.”
Gristhorpe scratched his chin and frowned. “What do you make of it all, Annie?” he asked.
“I don’t know, sir. He’s been gone three nights now and nobody’s seen hide nor hair.”
“What about the Armitages?”
“Nothing.”
“Sure they’re telling you the truth?”
“They’ve no reason to lie now,” Annie said. “And the kidnapper knows we’re treating Luke as a misper. Remember, it was him who suggested that the Armitages get Luke to back up their story.”
“Too late for that, now, isn’t it?” said DC Kevin Templeton. “I mean, wasn’t he supposed to come home yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened?” Gristhorpe asked.
“He’s probably dead, sir,” cut in DC Winsome Jackman.
“But why hasn’t the kidnapper gone for the money?”
“Because he knows we’re watching,” Annie answered. “It’s the only explanation. He must have seen me when I went up to the shelter to check the briefcase.”
Nobody said anything; there was nothing they could say. Annie knew they agreed with her and could all sense what she was feeling herself, that gut-wrenching fear that she might be responsible for the boy’s death, that if she had stuck to rules and procedure, then things might have gone according to plan. To give him his due, though, whatever he thought, Gristhorpe didn’t say anything.
“Unless…” Annie went on.
“Aye, lass?”
“Well, a couple of things have puzzled me about all this right from the start.”
“I agree that as kidnappings go, it’s hardly conventional,” said Gristhorpe, “but go on.”
Annie took a sip of water. “In the first place,” she said, “why did the kidnapper wait so long before getting in touch with the Armitages and making his demand? Luke disappeared sometime late Monday afternoon or evening, according to what we’ve managed to find out so far, yet the demand didn’t come until after dark on Tuesday.”
“Maybe the kidnapper didn’t get hold of him until Tuesday,” DC Templeton suggested.
“You mean he really did run away and just happened to get picked up by a kidnapper before he could go back?”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Too much of a coincidence, I’d say.”
“Coincidences do happen.”
“Sometimes, maybe.”
“Or the kidnapper might have been keeping an eye on Luke for a while, watching his movements, biding his time.”
“I’ll grant you that’s more likely,” said Gristhorpe. “Annie?”
“It still doesn’t explain the time delay between Luke’s not turning up at home Monday night and the ransom demand on Tuesday evening, sir. These people don’t usually like to waste time. If they snatched him on Monday, then they’d have rung the Armitages on Monday. Besides, that’s only the first thing that bothered me.”
“What’s next?” Gristhorpe asked.
“Well, Martin Armitage told me that when he asked to speak to Luke, the kidnapper wouldn’t let him, said Luke was somewhere else.”
“So?” said DC Templeton. “That’s perfectly likely, isn’t it?”
“But he was calling from Luke’s mobile,” Annie pointed out.
“I still don’t see your point,” said Templeton. “Mobiles are mobile. You can take them anywhere. That’s what they’re for.”
Annie sighed. “Think about it, Kev. If Luke’s being kept somewhere where there isn’t a phone, then the kidnapper might have to go to a phone box, and he’d be unlikely to take Luke with him. But the kidnapper was using Luke’s mobile, so why isn’t he with Luke?”
“Could be where they’re keeping the lad is out of cell range,” suggested DC Rickerd.
“Possible,” Annie agreed, remembering her time out of range. “But isn’t it usual for kidnappers to let the people they want the money from speak to their loved ones? Isn’t it an incentive to pay? Proof of life?”
“Good point, Annie,” said Gristhorpe. “So we’ve got two unusual variations on the formula. First, the time delay, and second, no proof of life. Anything else?”
“Yes,” said Annie. “The ransom demand.”
“What about it?” asked Gristhorpe.
“It’s nowhere near enough.”
“But the Armitages aren’t as rich as people think they are,” argued Templeton.
“My point exactly, Kev. So they’re struggling to maintain Swainsdale Hall and whatever lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to. We know that now, since I talked to them, but it wasn’t common knowledge. As police, we’re privy to a lot of inside information. It’s our lifeblood. But if you kidnapped the son of a famous ex-model and a famous ex-footballer, living in a place like Swainsdale Hall, how much would you think they were worth? How much would you ask them for the life of their son? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Fifty? I’d go to a hundred, myself, or maybe a quarter of a million. Let them negotiate down a few thousand from there. I certainly wouldn’t start at ten.”
“So maybe the kidnapper knew they were on their uppers?” Templeton suggested. “Maybe it’s someone who knows the family?”
“Then why kidnap Luke at all? Why not go for someone who had more money?”
“Maybe that’s all they needed. Maybe it’s enough.”
“You’re clutching at straws, Kev.”
Templeton smiled. “Just playing devil’s advocate, ma’m, that’s all. But if you’re right, then perhaps they don’t have quite the intelligence we’re crediting them with.”
“Okay. Point taken.” Annie looked at Gristhorpe. “But don’t you think it’s all a bit puzzling when you add it up, sir?”
Gristhorpe paused and made a steeple of his thick fingers on the desk before answering. “I do,” he said. “I can’t say I’ve had to deal with many kidnappings over the course of my career—and for that I thank the Lord, because it’s a cowardly crime—but I’ve dealt with a few, and none of them have been as riddled with anomalies as this one. What are your conclusions, Annie?”
“Either it’s an amateur job,” Annie answered. “Very amateur, like some junkie who saw the chance to get enough money for his next few fixes and now he’s too scared to go through with it.”
“Or?”
“Or it’s something else entirely. A setup, a diversion, the ransom dem
and merely to deflect us, confuse us, and something else is going on.”
“Like what?” Gristhorpe asked.
“I don’t know, sir,” Annie answered. “All I know is that in either scenario the outcome looks bad for Luke.”
It wasn’t fair, thought Andrew Naylor, the man from the Ministry, as he drove his government Range Rover over the disinfectant pad at the entrance to the unfenced road above Gratly. He had nothing to do with foot-and-mouth control, yet in the eyes of the locals, all government employees were tarred with the same brush. Everyone knew him in the area, and before the outbreak no one had paid him much mind. Now, though, he was getting sick of the resentful looks he got when he walked into a shop or a pub, the way conversations stopped and whispers began, and the way people sometimes even expressed their anger to his face. In one pub, they had been so hostile toward him he thought they were going to beat him up.
It didn’t do the slightest bit of good to tell them that he worked for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, in the Water and Land Directorate, and that his job was water, because that only made them think of Yorkshire Water—of droughts, leakages, shortages and restrictions on washing their bloody cars and watering their lawns—and then they got even angrier.
It was part of Andrew’s job to collect water samples from local lakes, ponds, tarns and reservoirs, and these were later tested for contaminants at the Central Science Laboratory. Because some of these bodies of water were surrounded by open country, Andrew was one of the few with a special dispensation to visit them, after taking all the proper precautions, of course.
That day, his last call was Hallam Tarn, a godforsaken, hollowed-out bowl of water on the very top of the moor, beyond Tetchley Fell. Legend had it that the place used to be a village once, but the villagers took to Satanic practices, so God smote them with his fist and the tarn was created in place of the village. It was said that on certain days of the year you could see the old houses and streets beneath the water’s surface and hear the cries of the villagers. Sometimes, when the light was right and the curlew’s cry piped across the desolate moor, Andrew could almost believe it.
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