Susan could hardly believe what she was hearing, even though it was exactly what she had expected. “So you admit it? Just like that? You used me to spy on my colleagues?”
“Well, seeing as you have the evidence, there’s not a lot else I can say, is there? I can hardly deny it. Yes. Mea culpa.”
“I don’t understand, Gavin. How could you do that?”
Gavin shrugged. “I never thought it would come to anything like this,” he said. “For crying out loud, it was only little tidbits, nothing important. Like I said, Riddle just wanted to be kept informed. But that wasn’t why I asked you out in the first place. That only came later. When he found out I was going out with you. And believe me, I didn’t tell him. He’s got quite a network, has Riddle.” He shrugged. “I didn’t really think it would do any harm.”
“Did he want to be kept informed about Eastvale in general, or DCI Banks in particular?”
Gavin shifted from foot to foot. “Well, he did ask about Banks in particular. He never really approved of Banks, you know. Thought he was a bit of a maverick, if truth be told.”
“I know that,” said Susan. “He never liked him. Right from the start. I remember the Deborah Harrison case, when Banks upset some of Riddle’s important friends. He was just looking for something to use against him. And you used me to get it for him. That’s what I can’t forgive.”
“Like I said, I didn’t really think I was doing anything-”
“Oh, stuff it, Gavin. I’m not interested in your excuses. You used me to scupper Banks’s career, and that’s all I care about.”
“If that’s how you want to see it.”
“Is there any other way?”
“I take it things are over between us, then?”
Susan could only look at him and shake her head. Then she turned to leave.
“What is it, Susan?” Gavin called after her. “Fancy him yourself, do you? You should listen to the way you talk about him. Like a lovesick teenager. Believe me, it wasn’t very difficult to get you talking about him. The hardest thing was getting you to stop. Even in bed.”
Susan slammed the door behind her and got back in her car. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn the key in the ignition. All she could do was sit there, hands gripping the steering wheel, shaking. She took deep breaths.
And then Susan did something she hardly ever did, something she always hated herself for when it happened. She started to cry. Bloody great convulsive sobs. Because, fuck it, she said to herself, Gavin was right. She had never admitted it, but she had known it for ages. It was Banks she cared about; it was Banks she fancied. And, dammit, he was a married man, he was her senior officer, and he wouldn’t look at her that way in a month of Sundays. She was just another stupid girl in love with her boss and there was no way she could stay in Eastvale now, not after this.
III
It had long since turned dark when Banks got home. For hours, it seemed, he had driven around the Dales, hardly noticing where he was, or what music kept repeating on the cassette player. His knuckles still hurt, but the shaking inside had stopped. Had he really done it? Punched Jimmy Riddle? He realized he had, and he also realized that at the moment the anger had burst out of him, it was Sandra he had been thinking of, not the bloody job.
The house was quiet and empty. A different quality of silence and emptiness than he had ever felt there before. First, he had a look around to see if anything was missing. Sandra hadn’t taken very much. Most of her clothes were still in the wardrobe, the scent of her hair still lingered on the pillows, and her photograph of the misty sunset above Hawes still hung over the fireplace in the living room.
It made him think how only on Sunday, yesterday, he had wandered the Amsterdam museums in the rain, a pilgrim marveling at Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in the Rijks-museum, unsettled by Crows in the Wheatfield in the Van Gogh Museum, and, finally, elated by the bright, whimsical Chagalls in the Stedelijk Museum.
All the while thinking how Sandra would have loved it, and how he would like to treat her to a visit one weekend in spring, perhaps as a belated birthday present.
But Sandra was gone.
He noticed the red light blinking on the telephone answering machine. Thinking it might be Sandra, he got up and pressed the replay button. One call was Vic Manson, two were hang-ups, but the next four were from Tracy. On the last one, she said, “Dad, are you there? It’s Sunday now. I’ve been trying to ring you all weekend. I’m worried about you. If you are there, please answer. I talked to Mummy and she told me what happened. I’m so sorry. I love you, Daddy. Please give me a ring.”
Banks stood by the phone for a moment, head in his hands, tears burning in his eyes. Then he did what any reasonable man would do in his situation. He cranked Mozart’s Requiem up as loud as he could bear it and got rat-arse drunk.
TWELVE
I
When Banks stirred on the sofa at about four o’clock in the morning, Mozart’s Requiem was still playing on “repeat.” And a more fitting piece of music he couldn’t imagine. It was playing loudly, too, and he was surprised that none of his neighbors had called the police. Still, he was the police. Or used to be.
Wishing he were still unconscious, he groaned, rubbed his stubble, rolled off the sofa and put some coffee on, turning the volume down on the stereo as he went. Then he stumbled upstairs and swallowed a handful of aspirins, washed down with two glasses of water to irrigate his dehydrated brain cells.
Back downstairs, as the coffee dripped through the filter with frustrating slowness, he surveyed the damage: twelve cigarette ends in the ashtray; no burns on the sofa or carpet; about two fingers of Laphroaig left. If he was going to keep up this rate of drinking, he would have to start buying cheaper Scotch. Still, it could have been a lot worse, he concluded, especially as he remembered the bottle had only been about three-quarters full when he started.
When the coffee was ready, he decided to switch from the Requiem to the C Minor Mass, something to bring a little more light and hope into his bleak world, then he tried to collect his thoughts.
He had punched Jimmy Riddle; that was the first memory to come back. And he had skinned knuckles to prove it. Well, that had been a stupid thing to do, he realized now, and it had also probably put the mockers on his career.
Jobless, then. Also wifeless and hung over. At least the hangover would go away. It could be worse, couldn’t it? Yes, it could, he realized. He could have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. He racked his brains to see if that had, in fact, happened, but could find no memory of it. It would probably happen today the way his lungs felt after all those cigarettes.
So what was he going to do? Become a private eye? Enter a monastery? Get a job with some security outfit? Or should he just carry on and solve the Jason Fox case on his own to run rings around Jimmy Riddle, just as Sherlock Holmes did around Inspector Lestrade? Alan Banks, Consulting Detective. Had a nice ring to it.
He poured himself a cup of black coffee and flopped back on the sofa. Looking at the misty Hawes sunset over the fireplace, for some reason he remembered Sandra telling him on Thursday that there might have been somebody else, but there wasn’t. Remembered the faraway look in her eyes when she said it.
And that made him angry. He pictured Sandra with some strapping, bearded young artist, standing in the wind on the moors doing a Cathy and Heathcliff, looking lovingly into each other’s eyes and exercising restraint. “No, my darling, we mustn’t. There’s too much at stake. Think of the children.” Grand passion collides with family values and moral responsibility. It was a scene from a cheap romance. But all the same, it made Banks clench his jaw. What might have been. And, come to think of it, he only had her word for it that she hadn’t left him to run off with someone else, someone she would only take up with publicly after a “decent” interval.
Well, two could play at that game. Banks had had his chances at infidelity in the past, too, but he hadn’t taken them. He hadn’t romanticized them, either.
He thought especially of Jenny Fuller. There had been a time, some years ago, when something might have blossomed between them. Was it too late now? Probably. Jenny seemed to spend most of her time teaching in America these days, and she had a steady boyfriend over there. Then there was Pamela Jeffreys, the one Riddle thought was his mistress. Banks hadn’t slept with Pamela, either, but it was an appealing thought.
So many choices. So many possibilities. Then why did he feel so bloody miserable and empty? Because, he concluded, none of them was what he wanted. What he wanted, when it came right down to it, was his job back, Sandra back and his hangover gone. Perhaps if he played a country-and-western song backward…? He couldn’t even do that, hating country and western the way he did. Still, taking stock of himself, he realized that, depressed as he was, he felt calmer now than when he was stuck at the airport yesterday contemplating his return home. Thumping Jimmy Riddle probably had something to do with that.
After the first cup of coffee, he realized he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything since that snack on the plane, a million years ago now. Searching through the remnants of the fridge, he managed to throw together three rashers of streaky bacon and two eggs only a week past their sell-by date. That would have to do. The one remaining slice of bread was a little stale, but it hadn’t turned green yet, and it would fry up nicely in the bacon fat. Cholesterol special. So what?
As he fried his breakfast, Banks remembered Tracy’s messages. He would have to ring her today and put her mind at rest. Should he explain to her about losing his job, too? Best not yet, he decided. It was bad enough his daughter should suddenly find herself the child of a broken marriage the minute she flew the coop, let alone the child of a disgraced copper. There would be time enough for that later. He would have to phone Brian in Portsmouth, too, and his own parents. They would all be upset.
Suddenly, the day ahead seemed full of things to do. None of them pleasant. The only bright spot was that he wouldn’t have to worry about money for a while; the suspension was with pay. And Jimmy Riddle couldn’t do a thing about that until after a disciplinary hearing.
He cursed as he broke an egg while lifting it onto the plate and yolk ran all over the counter. It would have to do. No more left. Carefully, he used the spatula to lift the one unbroken egg onto the fried bread, then patted the bacon with some kitchen roll to remove the excess grease and tucked in. When he’d finished, he poured another cup of coffee and lit a cigarette.
It was still just past five in the morning, and he hadn’t a clue what to do to keep him occupied until it was a decent time to start phoning people. Sleep was out of the question now, and he knew he couldn’t possibly concentrate on reading a book or listening to music. He needed something completely mindless, something to keep his thoughts off his problems for a few hours. Like television.
But there was nothing on television at that time apart from something educational on BBC2 and a studio discussion on ITV, so he started sorting through the video collection, odds and sods he’d picked up over the years. Finally, he found one that would do. It was still in its cellophane wrapper, so someone must have bought it for him as a present and he’d forgotten he had it.
Bridge on the River Kwai. Perfect. He remembered his dad taking him to see a revival of it at the Gaumont when he was about twelve. It would take him back to those days, when life was simple, and right at the moment he would give anything on earth to be that innocent twelve-year-old again, grabbing his father’s hand when Jack Hawkins burned the leeches off with a cigarette, thrilling at the way all the birds flew up and the pool turned red with blood when they ambushed the Japanese patrol, and biting his nails to the quick as Alec Guiness made his final, dying, staggering way to the dynamite plunger. Yes, The Bridge on the River Kwai might just keep the dark hounds of depression at bay for another couple of hours, until daylight came.
II
Susan didn’t know where she was going when she left the station around eleven o’clock that morning, only that she had to get out of the office for a while. Let Riddle suspend her, too, if he found out.
The next thing she knew she found herself on Castle Walk looking out over the formal gardens and the river, all framed in the branches of the beeches. It was the same view she’d had from the bistro with Gavin on Saturday night. Just thinking about that night made her burn with shame and rage.
Across the Swain, a belt of trees called the Green partially obscured the East Side Estate, but she could still make out a few of the light red brick terraces and maisonettes, and the three twelve-story blocks of flats – a crime wave in themselves – poked their ugly heads way above the trees. Beyond the estate and the railway tracks were the chocolate factory and a few old warehouses, corrugated metal roofs glinting in the sun. A local diesel rattled by and blew its horn.
She would have to leave Eastvale; there was no doubt about that. Now that she had admitted her feelings to herself, she could no longer work with Banks. She couldn’t trust herself not to act like a love-struck schoolgirl; nor could she go running off in tears every time she saw him, either. And she would have to see him. He might be suspended for the moment, but a disciplinary hearing would probably reinstate him, she thought.
It also hadn’t taken her long to work out the fact that, after what she had witnessed yesterday, Jimmy Riddle would want her as far away from North Yorkshire as possible. At least that could be easily accomplished without raising any eyebrows.
Although it did happen on occasion, it was rare for a DC to be promoted straight to the rank of detective sergeant within the same station. The most likely scenario was a transfer and at least a year back in uniform. This was supposed to be a safeguard against corruption: senior officers offering promotion in exchange for falsified evidence.
At first, Susan had hoped the chief constable would approve her request to stay. But being promoted within East-vale CID didn’t matter to her now. She had to leave. And the farther away, the better. Devon and Cornwall, maybe. She had fond memories of childhood holidays in that part of the world: St. Ives, Torquay, Polperro.
How could she have been so stupid? she asked herself again. In cafés, pubs and in bed she had chatted away to Gavin about Banks and his idiosyncrasies, his love of music, his guilt over the injuries to Pamela Jeffreys, and Gavin had turned it over to Jimmy Riddle, who had twisted and perverted it beyond all recognition. If anyone deserved to be suspended, it was Riddle and Gavin. Fat chance.
An old woman walking a dog passed Susan on the path and said hello. After they had gone by, Susan paused a moment to sit on a bench. She was facing north now and to her left she could see the square Norman church tower, the bus station and the glass-and-concrete Swainsdale Centre. Straight ahead was the pre-Roman site in the distance, not much more than a couple of bumps in the grassland down by the river.
Even though there wasn’t a great deal to do around the station in the aftermath of the Jason Fox case, Susan didn’t think she could honestly stay away too long. After all, a call might come in, something important, and if she missed it she’d have to explain why.
She remembered something else she had overheard yesterday: Banks expressing doubts about the solution. Though she couldn’t quite put her finger on exactly what, there were things about Mark Wood’s confession that rang false with her, too. Maybe she should have a look over the reports again. So, with a sigh, she stood up and headed back around Castle Walk.
As she went up the stairs to CID, she told herself she would have to get a grip, lock up her feelings, keep them separate and behave like a professional. She could do it; she’d done it before. On some level, being a woman in a man’s world, she did it all the time. She would also have to work out how to deal with Banks’s misplaced trust in her. Should she tell him about Gavin? Could she really do that?
III
Shortly after six o’clock that evening, Banks sat in Leeds Parish Church. Though not much to look at from the outside, the interior had recently been restored to all its Victorian
Gothic glory; like the Town Hall, all stained glass, dark polished wood and high arches.
He wasn’t there because his troubles had driven him to religion. In fact, he was listening to a rehearsal of Vivaldi’s Gloria by the St. Peter’s Singers and Chamber Orchestra. It certainly wasn’t where he had expected to be, or what he had expected to be doing when he woke up on the sofa that morning.
Tracy had rung him much earlier than he would have thought of ringing her. At least he was feeling a bit more human by then. She was full of concern, naturally, and he tried to assure her that he would be okay. Tracy told him she was going down to Croydon for a while to stay with her mother and grandparents, but she assured him she wasn’t taking sides. He told her to go, take care of her mother; he’d see her when she came back. Reluctantly, she hung up. Maybe he hadn’t lost Tracy after all.
He felt the need to get out of Eastvale around noon, so he phoned Pamela Jeffreys. As it turned out, she had a rehearsal that evening, but Banks was welcome to attend. She was surprised to hear from him and said she would be delighted to see him. Someone pleased to see him? Music to his ears.
He drove to Leeds in plenty of time to browse the city-center record shops first. A couple of CDs would be paltry compensation for the miserable time he’d had lately, but they would be better than nothing. Like the toy soldier his mother always used to buy him after he’d been to the dentist’s.
By half past six, the conductor seemed frustrated by the soprano section’s inability to enter on time, so he ended the rehearsal early. Pamela packed away her viola, grabbed her jacket and walked toward Banks. She was wearing black leggings and a baggy black velvet top, belted at the waist, with a scoop neckline which plunged just above the curve of her breasts. Her long raven hair hung over her shoulders and the diamond stud in her right nostril glittered in the side-lighting. Her skin was the color of burnished gold, her eyes almond in shape and color, and her finely drawn red lips revealed straight white teeth when she smiled. Many of them were crowned, Banks knew. Looking at her now, he found it hard to believe that only a couple of years ago she had been lying in a hospital bed covered in bandages wondering if she would ever be able to play again.
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