Blood At The Root

by Peter Robinson

  Now it was Banks’s turn to frown. “He left? I don’t understand. Why?”

  Mary stared at the screen and pressed her lips together in thought, then she looked at Banks with her warm, dark eyes, smiled and said, “Look, I appreciate that you’re a policeman, and a pretty senior one at that. I also appreciate this might be important, even though you haven’t told me a thing. But personnel records are private. I’m afraid I can’t just go around giving people any information they want at the drop of a hat, or a warrant card. I’m sure you could get a court order, if you really want to know. But I’m only doing my job. I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you any more, even if I knew.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Banks. “Can you tell me anything at all about his time here, about his friends?”

  She shook her head. “As I said, it was before my time. I’ve never heard of him.” She turned to face the others in the office. “Anyone remember a Jason Fox used to work here?”

  All she got in return was blank stares and shaking heads. Apart from one woman, who said, “The name sounds familiar.”

  “You’re thinking of Jason Donovan,” someone else said, and they laughed.

  “Can you at least tell me what department he worked in?” Banks asked.

  “That I can tell you,” Mary said. “He was in sales. Domestic. You’ll find them in the old office building, across the yard. And,” she said, smiling, “you should also find some of the people he worked with are still there. Try David Wayne first. He’s one of the regional sales managers now.”

  “Just a minute,” came a voice from the back of the office. “Jason Fox, you said? Now I remember. It was a couple of years back. I’d just started here. There was some trouble, some sort of scandal. Something hushed up.”

  II

  The sound of the car pulling up woke Frank from his afternoon nap. Slowly, he groped his way back to consciousness – it seemed to take longer every time, as if consciousness itself were slowly moving farther and farther away from him – and walked over to the window. There they were: the three of them, struggling up the path against the wind. Well, he supposed they would have to come sometime; Josie had already telephoned and told him what had happened to Jason.

  He answered the knock, let them in and told them to make themselves comfortable while he went to put the kettle on. The good old English custom of a nice cup of tea, he thought, had helped people avoid many an embarrassing moment. Not that they should be embarrassed about what had happened, of course, but Yorkshire folk, especially, often fell short of words when it came to strong emotions.

  Josie gave him a silent hug when he came through from the kitchen, then she sat down. Grief suited her in a way, he thought; she had always looked a bit pinched to him. These days, she had also started to look more like mutton dressed as lamb, too, with that makeup, her roots showing, and those figure-hugging outfits she wore. At her age. Her mother would have been ashamed of her.

  Steven looked as lackluster as ever. Couldn’t Josie, he wished again, have chosen someone with a bit of spunk in him?

  Then there was Maureen. Good-natured, bustling, hard-working, no-nonsense Maureen. The best of the lot of them, in his book. A proper bonny lass, too; she’d break a few hearts in her time, with her laughing eyes and smiling lips and hair like spun gold all the way down to her waist. Well, not today. But that was how he remembered her. She had cut her hair short just after she started nurses’ training. A real shame, that, he thought.

  “When’s the funeral?” he asked.

  “Thursday,” Josie answered. “Oh, you should have seen what they’d done to him, Dad.” She sniffled. “Our poor Jason.”

  Frank nodded. “Nay, lass… Police getting anywhere?”

  “Even if they were,” Josie sniffed, “they wouldn’t tell us, would they?”

  The kettle boiled. Frank moved to rise, but Maureen sprang to her feet. “I’ll get it, Granddad. Stay where you are.”

  “Thanks, lass,” he said gratefully, and sank back into his armchair. “What have they told you?”

  “They’ve got some lads helping them with their inquiries,” Josie said. “Pakistanis.” She sniffed. “They think it might have started as an argument in a pub, and that these lads followed our Jason, or waited for him in the ginnel and beat him up. The police think they probably didn’t mean to kill him.”

  “What do you think?” Frank asked.

  Maureen came back with the teapot and raised her eyebrows at the question. “We haven’t really had much time to think about it at all yet, Granddad,” she said. “But I’m sure the police know their business.”

  “Aye.”

  “What is it?” Steven Fox said, speaking for the first time. “You don’t think they’ll do a good job?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Frank said.

  “Well, what is it, then?” Josie Fox repeated her husband’s question. Maureen started pouring milk and tea into mugs, spooning in sugar.

  “Nowt,” said Frank. He fingered the folded, creased sheet of paper in his top shirt pocket and pulled it out.

  “What’s that, Granddad?” Maureen asked.

  “Just something I got in the post.”

  Maureen frowned. “But what… I don’t…”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” said Frank, his patience with them finally snapping. “Don’t you know what happened? Don’t you know anything? Did you all turn your bloody backs?” He turned toward Maureen. “What about you?” he snapped. “I’d have expected more of you.”

  Maureen started to cry. Frank felt the familiar pain, almost an old friend now, grip his chest. Hand shaking, he tossed the sheet toward Josie. “Go on,” he said. “Read it.”

  III

  Banks crossed the factory yard, dodging puddles rainbowed with oil. Crates and chunks of old machinery were stacked up by the sides of long one-story buildings with rusty corrugated iron roofs. Machine noises buzzed and roared from inside. Forklifts beetled back and forth across the uneven yard, carrying boxes on pallets. The place smelled of diesel oil and burned plastic.

  He soon found the old office building, which had probably been adequate in the early days, before the company grew. There was no receptionist, just a large open area with desks, computers, telephones and people. Filing cabinets stood against the walls. At the far end of the room, several small offices had been partitioned off, their lower parts wood and the upper parts, above waist height, glass.

  A woman dashed by Banks on her way to the door, a couple of file folders stuffed under her arm. When he asked her if David Wayne was around, she nodded and pointed to the middle office. Banks walked between the rows of desks, attracting no attention at all, then knocked on the door that bore the nameplate DAVID C. WAYNE.

  The man who invited him in was younger than Banks had expected. Late twenties, early thirties at the most. He wore a white shirt with a garish tie, wavy brown hair falling over his collar. He had one of those high foreheads with little shiny red bumps at each side that made his hairline seem to be prematurely receding, and he smelled of Old Spice. A dark sports jacket hung over the back of his chair.

  He frowned as he studied Banks’s warrant card, then gestured to the spare chair and said, “How can I help you?”

  Banks sat down. “I’m making inquiries about Jason Fox,” he said. “I understand he used to work here?”

  Wayne ’s frown deepened. “That’s going back a bit.”

  “But you do remember him?”

  “Oh, yes. I remember Jason all right.” Wayne leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the desk. The telephone rang; he ignored it. In the background, Banks could hear the hubbub of the office through the flimsy partition. “Why do you want to know?” Wayne asked.

  Much as Banks hated parting with information, it would do no harm in this case, he thought, and it might get Wayne to open up more quickly. He could already sense that something was not quite right, and the woman in the Human Resources Department had implied some sort of cover-up. S
o he told Wayne that Jason had been found dead, and that his parents had said he worked for this company.

  “After all this time.” Wayne shook his head slowly. “Amazing.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “He didn’t leave. Not exactly.”

  “He was fired?”

  “No.”

  “Made redundant?”

  “No.”

  Banks sighed and shifted position. “Look, Mr. Wayne,” he said, “I didn’t come here to play a guessing game. I came to get information that might be important in a serious police investigation.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Wayne, scratching his head. “It’s all still a bit embarrassing, you see.”

  “Embarrassing? In what way?”

  “I wasn’t in management back then. I was just one of Jason’s co-workers. I had more experience, though. In fact, I was the one who trained him.”

  “Was he a poor worker?”

  “On the contrary. He was very good at his job. Bright, energetic, quick to learn. Showed an extraordinary aptitude for computers, considering he’d had no formal training in that area. Still, that’s often the case.”

  “Then what-”

  “The job isn’t everything, Chief Inspector,” Wayne went on quickly. “Oh, it’s important, I’ll grant you that. You can put up with a lot of idiosyncrasies if someone’s as good as Jason was. We’ve had our share of arseholes in our time and, by and large, if they’re competent, hardworking arse-holes, you just tend to put up with them.”

  “But it was different with Jason?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what way?”

  “It was his attitude,” Wayne explained. “I suppose you’d call it his political beliefs.”

  “Which were?”

  “To put it in a nutshell, Jason was a racist. White power and all that. And it didn’t take a lot to get him on his hobby horse. Just some item in the newspaper, some new opinion poll or crime statistics.”

  “What exactly did he say?”

  “You name it. Asians and West Indians were his chief targets. According to Jason, if something wasn’t done soon, the immigrants would take over the country and run it into the ground. Anarchy would follow. Chaos. The law of the jungle. He said you only had to look around you to see what damage they’d done already. AIDS. Drugs. Unemployment. He put them all down to immigrants.” Wayne shook his head again. “It was disgusting, really sick, some of the things he came out with.”

  “Is that why he left?”

  Wayne nodded. “As I said, he didn’t exactly leave. It was more of a mutual parting of the ways, maybe a little more desired on our side than his. But the company paid him off adequately and got rid of him. No blemish on his references, either. I suppose whoever employed him next found out what the bugger was like soon enough. I mean, it’s all very well to crack the odd… you know… off-color joke, have a bit of a laugh. We all do that, don’t we? But Jason was serious. He didn’t have a sense of humor about these things. Just hatred. A palpable hatred. You could feel it burning out of him when he spoke, see it in his eyes.” Wayne gave a little shudder.

  “Do you know where he got it from?”

  “No idea. Where do people get these things from? Are they born like that? Do we blame the parents? Peers at school? The recession? Society?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably a bit of everything. But I do know that it was always there with Jason, always just beneath the surface, if it wasn’t actually showing. And, of course, we have a number of Asian and West Indian employees here.”

  “Did he ever insult anyone to their face?”

  Wayne rubbed his forehead and glanced away from Banks, out at the bustling business activity through his window. “Mostly he just made them feel uncomfortable,” he said, “but once he went too far. That was enough. One of the secretaries. Milly. Nice woman. From Barbados. Jason usually kept her at arm’s length. Anyway, she got pregnant, and at some point – so she said – when it started to show, Jason made some remark to her about all her kind could do was procreate, and there were too many of them already. Milly was upset, understandably, and she threatened to report him to the Race Relations Board. Well, the directors didn’t want that… you know… the whole operation under the microscope, racism in the workplace and all that… so they asked Jason to leave.”

  “They offered him money?”

  “A fair settlement. Just what he would have got if he’d been made redundant.”

  “And he went quietly?”

  Wayne nodded.

  “Could I speak to Milly?”

  “She’s no longer with the company.”

  “Do you have her address?”

  “I suppose I can tell you. I shouldn’t, but given the circumstances…” He got up, pulled out a file from one of the cabinets against his wall, and told Banks the address. Then he sat down again.

  “Do you know where Jason went after he left here?” Banks asked.

  Wayne shook his head. “Not a clue. He never got in touch again, and I can’t say I was exactly eager to seek him out.”

  “So when he left here he disappeared from your life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he have any close friends here?”

  “Not really. I wasn’t even particularly close to him myself. He was a bit of a loner. Never talked about his outside interests, family, girlfriends, that sort of thing. He had no patience with the usual office chitchat. Except football. He loved to talk about football. Mad about it. On a Monday morning he’d talk about the weekend games for so long, it was sometimes hard to get him working at all.”

  “People listened, then? The same ones who were sickened by his racism?”

  Wayne spread his hands. “What can I say? There’s nothing like an enthusiasm for sports to make a person seem more human. And we seem able to overlook an awful lot in our sports heroes, don’t we? I mean, look at Gazza. The bugger beats up his wife and he’s still a national hero.”

  “What about enemies?”

  Wayne raised his eyebrows. “Probably just about every immigrant in the country. At least the ones who knew what he was.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “What was he like as a person? How would you describe him?”

  Wayne put a pencil against his lips and thought for a moment, then he said, “Jason was one of those people who can frighten you with their intensity. I mean, mostly he was withdrawn, quiet, in his own world. On first impressions, he seemed rather shy, but when he did come out, whether to talk about a football game or comment on some political article in the paper, then he became very passionate, very fervent. He had charisma. You could imagine him speaking to groups, swaying their opinions.”

  “A budding Hitler, then? Interesting.” Banks closed his notebook and stood up. He could think of nothing more to ask. “Thanks for your time,” he said, holding out his hand. “I might want to talk to you about this again.”

  Wayne shook hands and nodded. “I’ll be here.”

  And Banks walked through the busy office, back out into the bleak factory yard, the oil smell, the machinery noise, overflowing skips, the rainbowed puddles. Just as he got to the car, his mobile beeped.

  IV

  “No, Gavin, I can’t possibly go out for a drink with you tonight. We’re very busy.”

  “The boy wonder got you working overtime, then?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call him that.”

  Susan heard Gavin chuckle over the line. “Who’s he got pegged for this one, then? Our local MP? Leader of the hunt?” He laughed again.

  Susan felt herself flush. “That’s not very funny.” She hated it when Gavin made fun of Banks.

  “How about Saturday? We can go-”

  “Maybe,” Susan said. “Maybe Saturday. I’ll have to see. Got to go now, Gavin. Work to do.”

  “Okay. See you Saturday.”

  “I said maybe. Just a minute… what’s that?” Susan could hear so
unds of shouting and scuffling, and they seemed to be coming from downstairs. “Got to go, Gavin,” she said. “I’ll ring you back.”

  “Susan, what’s-”

  Susan dropped the receiver on its cradle and walked to the top of the stairs. The scene below was utter chaos. Every Asian in Eastvale – all nine or ten of them – seemed to be pushing through the front doors: George Mahmood’s parents, Ibrahim Nazur, owner of the Himalaya, and a handful of students from Eastvale College. A number of uniformed officers were holding them back, but they wanted to see the detectives, and Susan was the only CID officer in the station.

  “Would you please not all shout at once!” Susan yelled from halfway down the stairs.

  “What are you going to do about our children?” asked an angry Charles Mahmood. “You can’t just lock them up for nothing. This is racism, pure and simple. We’re British citizens, you know.”

  “Please believe me, Mr. Mahmood,” said Susan, advancing down the stairs. “We’re only keeping them until we get-”

  “No!” yelled Ibrahim Nazur. “It’s not fair. One law for whites and another law for us.”

  That met a chorus of agreement and they surged forward again.

  Suddenly, the front doors opened and a loud voice bellowed, “What in God’s name is going on here?” It had enough authority to command silence. Then Susan saw over the crowd the shiny, bald head of Chief Constable Jeremiah “Jimmy” Riddle, and for the first time ever, she was grateful for the sight.

  “Sergeant Rowe,” she heard Riddle say, “would you please order your officers to remove these people from the police station? Tell them if they’ll kindly wait outside we’ll have some news for them in just a few minutes.” Then Riddle made his way through the silent crowd, cutting a swath rather like Moses parting the Red Sea.

  Behind him, Sergeant Rowe muttered, “Yes, sir,” and ordered three constables to usher the group out onto the street. They went without putting up a fight.

  “That’s better,” said Riddle, approaching Susan. “It’s DC Gay, isn’t it?”