Banks next took in the façade of the house. Built of limestone, with cornerstones and lintels of gritstone, and a flagstone roof, it was a bit austere for his taste, perfectly symmetrical, with two downstairs and two upstairs windows on each side of the red door. Over the doorhead a date and some initials had been chiseled into the stone: ADH 1779. Banks could imagine a farmhouse in such a wild and isolated place needed to built like a fortress. It was probably windswept and lashed by rain for much of the year.
“Three foot,” said a deep voice beside him.
Banks turned, startled. He hadn’t heard anyone approach him, had been so lost in his contemplation of the view and the house that he hadn’t noticed the man come around the side and stand by the corner.
“I mean, if you were wondering how thick the walls are,” the man said. “And the initials are the original owner’s, the date probably when the house was built, or the commemoration of an important family marriage. It’s also the year that state prisons were first authorized, but I don’t really think that has a lot to do with the owner’s reason for carving it there, do you?” He walked over to Banks and rubbed his hands on the sides of his jeans. “I’m Gristhorpe, by the way.”
They shook. His hand was dry and calloused. “Alan Banks.”
“Good journey?”
“Excellent.” Banks gestured around him. “I’ve never been…I mean, I hadn’t realized how beautiful it is up here.”
Gristhorpe laughed. “You should pay us a visit in December before you make your mind up about that. Or talk to one of the local farmers.”
“I suppose so.”
“Come round the back. You’ll probably be wanting a drink?”
“No thank you,” said Banks. “I’m driving.”
“Most admirable, but I was thinking of tea. You wouldn’t believe how refreshing it is on a hot day.”
“Tea would be fine,” said Banks, following him around the side of the house to the back.
Two fold-out chairs awaited on a stone patio beside the back door. Beyond stretched Gristhorpe’s garden, or “acreage” as they would probably call it up here. It was certainly too big to be a garden, though there was a vegetable patch next to one of those drystone walls that seemed so common in the area. This one seemed to have collapsed in a couple of places.
“I’ll ask Mrs. Hawkins to rustle up some tea for us. She won’t mind.”
Gristhorpe disappeared for a moment, then came back and sat opposite Banks. He was a tall and solidly built man of about fifty, well padded some might say, with a shock of unruly silver hair, a ruddy pock-marked complexion and a bristly gray moustache. The most disconcerting thing about him, Banks thought, was not so much the dungarees and collarless striped shirt he was wearing, but his eyes. Set under bushy eyebrows, they were wide, deep blue and guileless, like a child’s. It would be hard lying to this man, Banks sensed immediately, or at least it would be hard to believe that he would believe your lies.
Even though they were outside, Banks asked for permission to smoke and Gristhorpe granted it. “I see you’ve had an accident,” Banks said, gesturing to the wall. “Storm?”
Gristhorpe followed Banks’s gaze and frowned. “No,” he said. “Practice. It’s a hobby of mine. I build a wall, then I take it down again and build it differently.”
“So it’s not a wall around anything, really?”
“That’s right.”
“Or to keep anything out?”
“No.”
“And it’s not really going anywhere in particular?”
Gristhorpe beamed at him. “You’ve got it.”
Banks was beginning to wonder what sort of weird yokel he’d got here. A man with baby blue eyes who builds walls that don’t go anywhere and don’t wall anything in. Were they all like that north of the Trent? Or the Wharfe? Maybe it was something in the water.
Mrs. Hawkins came out with the tea on a tray, along with a plate of scones. Banks was still full from lunch, but he had learned to eat when it’s offered, so he took one. It was still warm. He made appreciative noises as Gristhorpe poured the tea. That done, the superintendent said, “So what is it that makes you want to come and work up here?”
“Well,” said Banks, searching for the answer he had prepared in his mind. “It seems to me that in today’s force, if a man is at all ambitious, he has to move around. You know that promotion within the same station, even region, is discouraged. This is a great opportunity for me. A step up.”
Gristhorpe hadn’t been looking at Banks while he was talking. Banks fancied he’d been staring at his drystone wall and wondering where to put the next stone. The silence stretched, then Gristhorpe said, “So you’d say you’re an ambitious man, would you? I must admit, you do have that lean and hungry look, but I put it down to deprivation rather than overweening ambition. Missing too many meals, I’d say. Eating on the run.”
Banks wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but he realized the interview, or conversation, was taking off in a direction he hadn’t reckoned on. “Well, you know what it’s like,” he said “The job. Sometimes you just forget to eat.”
“So it is hunger, rather than ambition? Have another scone.”
“Sorry, sir? No, thanks, I’m full.”
“Hmm,” said Gristhorpe. “I don’t see advancement within the Met as a problem. It’s big enough, surely, to offer all the variety and specialization you need on the job these days?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so, it’s just…”
“Yes?” Gristhorpe stared at him with those guileless blue eyes.
Banks felt himself wading deeper into the quicksand. “I fancy a change, that’s all, sir. I heard about DCI Varley retiring and…well…I thought I’d give it a go. A change is as good as a rest.”
“So you need a rest? A holiday?”
“No, sir. I was speaking metaphorically.”
“Ah, I see. That’s admirable,” said Gristhorpe. “Of course, you know it’s not up to me, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, sir, but I rather thought…”
“Yes?”
“Well, as it’d be you I’d be working for directly…”
“That with us being such a small and insignificant outpost, I could put a word in, and the chief constable would just rubber-stamp it?”
“No. No, sir, I didn’t mean that at all.”
“Then what did you mean? Why are you here?”
Banks put his cup and saucer down. “I told you, sir. I fancy a move and a promotion. I thought I was here for an informal job interview,” he said, starting to stand up, “but I—”
“Oh, do sit down,” said Gristhorpe, waving his hand impatiently.
Banks saw the ghost of a smile on his face and sat down. “Sir.”
Gristhorpe leaned back in his chair, which seemed dangerously close to falling over, linked his hands behind his head and contemplated Banks, brows furrowed. “Let me tell you what I think, Alan, if I may call you that?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t get the impression, either from reading your personnel files or from meeting you in person, that you are an especially ambitious person. You’re an old-style copper, and you probably always will be. That’s why a move to a rural backwater like this for the sake of moving up one grade, from DI to DCI, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I think what we’ve really got here is a case of burnout. Or near burnout. Look at yourself, man. You’re chain-smoking, your fingernails are bitten to the quicks, you’ve got bags under your eyes big enough to pack for a six-week holiday, and I’d bet a pound to a penny you’ve got a drink problem, too. I think you’re after a spot of gardening leave, but you don’t want it to read that way on your service record. Am I close?”
“Not at…” Banks started to answer but tailed off, noticing Gristhorpe’s expression. There was no point trying to bullshit this man, he realized. He might as well leave right now. But something about the place, the view, the birdsong, the useless drystone wall, and about Gristhorpe himself, ke
pt him sitting where he was. There were other reasons he wanted this change. Yes, a lot of what Gristhorpe had said was true, but he hadn’t known until he had driven up north just how much he wanted to get away from what his life had become in London.
“Well? Cat got your tongue?”
Banks lit another cigarette, self-conscious that he was doing so. “You’re right in a way. It would be hard to deny that I’ve come to a sort of turning point and I need to make some serious choices. But this is one of them. I can do the job down there. I could stay and carry on just as I am now. Maybe in six months or a year I’d crack up, run off and join a private security firm, whatever, or maybe not, maybe it would just pass. But I don’t think I’d realized until a few days ago, and especially not until today, just how much I want the change.”
“Why? We must lead pretty boring lives up here compared to those action-packed days you blokes have in London.”
“I don’t know about that, sir,” said Banks.
“And if it’s gardening leave you want, or a desk job—”
“No,” Banks protested. “I want to do my job. I’m a detective. A good detective. That’s what I want to do. I want to work cases. I don’t want to just sit behind a desk.”
“You can do that down in London, just as you are doing now.”
“I know. But it…”
“We don’t get a lot of murders up here, but we do get the occasional missing sheep or post office robbery. A lot of your work would probably be routine.”
“It already is,” said Banks. “But as long as I can get out on the streets…”
“Country lanes. No mean streets here.” Gristhorpe smiled. “Well, maybe one or two in Eastvale.”
“Right. As long as I could get out, get among people, try to sort out the villains from the rest, follow leads…”
“You’d be at a bit of a disadvantage, being a Londoner.”
“I’m from Peterborough.”
“Same difference up here.”
“People are people everywhere.”
“Aye, they are that, all right. But they’re a rum lot around these parts.”
“I can do the job. I want to do the job.”
Gristhorpe held his gaze and Banks sensed his own resolve strengthening for the first time since he had considered moving, becoming real, solidifying into a need to come here, to prove himself to this insufferable, all-seeing, inscrutable detective superintendent sitting placidly in the chair opposite him as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
“Aye,” said Gristhorpe. “Mebbe you do. Got time for a walk?”
“Sir, you’d better come quick. There’s been another one. There’s a car waiting outside.”
Banks had only been back from Yorkshire for three days when Albright came over to his hutch at two o’clock on Wednesday afternoon. It had just stopped raining and the traffic was still a nightmare. Banks sweated even with the window open as he sat in the back and smoked, getting the scant details from Albright as the car crawled up Regent Street: a woman’s body found in a flat off Charlotte Street by a cleaner. Scene secured.
At least his hangover wasn’t too bad, he thought, as they went outside and got into the waiting car. After another evening in the clubs following leads in the Pamela Morrison case that twisted into thin air and disappeared like smoke, he had rung Linda and, getting no reply, had gone to Ronnie Scott’s alone, sat at the bar and sipped a double Scotch while he listened to the last set by an up-and-coming American jazz singer he’d never heard of. He liked the intimacy and warmth of Ronnie Scott’s, the small stage surrounded on three sides by tables, the soft lighting, plumes of smoke, a long bar stretching across the back. The singer was good, a slightly husky voice, expressive phrasing and a good range. She also sang some of his favorites: “Fine and Mellow,” “Summertime,” “I’ll Look Around,” and a version of “The Other Woman” that sent shivers up his spine.
At Oxford Circus, the driver went straight on, toward Broadcasting House, but turned right on Mortimer Street. They finally arrived at the flat, one of six in a narrow three-story building, signed in with the officer guarding the door and went inside, careful to follow the route mapped out by the SOCOs, who had got there just before them, along with DCI Roland Verity.
The actual crime scene was in the bedroom, but police tape had also been fixed across the door to the flat and across the front and back doors of the building itself, sealing off the whole place. For the moment, nobody but the SOCOs and the photographer, Harry Beckett, were allowed in the bedroom. A young police surgeon also stood in the living room looking pale, as if this were his first dead body. He told them that he had certified death, most likely caused by asphyxiation, and taken the body temperature, which indicated that she had died between midnight and three in the morning. The rest would be up to Dr. O’Grady, who was otherwise occupied in performing a postmortem, but would take over when the body reached the mortuary. It was the property of the coroner now, and when the various experts had finished, he would give the order to take it away.
Banks sent Albright to talk to the other tenants in the building, if any of them were home, and find out what he could about the victim’s comings and goings, and especially if anyone had noticed anything between midnight and three in the morning. Then he turned to Verity.
“Roly,” he said. “What brings you out here?”
“I was on a call across the street,” Verity said, “and I saw all the activity. Copper’s curiosity.”
The SOCOs were as territorial as usual about the crime scene and all Banks and Verity were allowed to do was stand at the bedroom door behind the tape and watch them at work. Banks cursed under his breath. Though he wasn’t supposed to do it, he always enjoyed a quick look at the scene, alone if possible, or at least without the officious presence of the technical support experts. Still, you couldn’t fault them on their work. There wasn’t much they missed.
The flat itself was certainly bigger and better appointed than the one where Pamela Morrison had been found, and Banks guessed that the victim probably lived here. It was nicely furnished with a leather-upholstered three-piece suite, drinks cabinet, glass-topped coffee table and sheepskin rug in front of the fake fireplace. She had an expensive TV and stereo system, a collection of pop LPs—Culture Club, Style Council, Duran Duran and Depeche Mode, among others—alongside some late-night romantic jazz—Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett. A call girl, perhaps? Certainly a step up from Pamela Morrison and her tiny room off Old Compton Street.
Whatever the case, she lay there very much as Pamela had, and just as young, covered by a white sheet up to her neck, hands together in an attitude of prayer over her chest, pale face and dark hair, no makeup, her eyes staring up sightlessly at the ceiling. Beside her was a crumpled pillow smeared with black and red marks. Banks was also willing to bet that under her clothes they would find her pubic hair shaved and a strip of Sellotape between her legs. But that was for Dr. O’Grady to discover later.
Banks wandered around the living room and opened the door to the bathroom. It was spacious, sparkling clean, with gold-plated taps and pink porcelain. The bath was big enough for two and was surrounded by colored candles in heavy cut-glass holders. Banks sniffed at one of them. Musk.
In the washstand lay a damp facecloth. Banks didn’t touch it, but he could see that it was smeared with mascara and lipstick. A woman’s disposable razor sat beside the tap, hairs curling from under its blade. He went back out and mentioned it to one of the SOCOs, who responded immediately by taping the bathroom out of bounds, too.
“It’d probably be pretty quiet around here between midnight and three on a Wednesday, wouldn’t it?” Banks asked Verity. “With all the pubs and restaurants closed.”
“There’s a few clubs,” said Verity. “And University College isn’t far away. Students seem to be up at all hours.”
“We’ll canvass the area, as usual. It’s amazing how nobody sees anything.”
“They don’t want to ge
t involved,” Verity said. “Happens all the time in Vice. People don’t even want to be remotely connected with anything that smells of Soho gangsters and kinky sex, let alone a loony bloody murderer on the loose. Can’t say I blame them.”
“Doesn’t help us much, though, does it?” said Banks. He nodded toward the bed. “Know her?”
Verity bristled. “What do you think I am, a fucking john?”
“No, Roly, you’re a Vice Squad cop. It’s your job to know what’s going on, put names to faces.”
“I’ll ask around.”
“Do we know her name?” Banks asked the room at large.
One of the SOCOs heard him and came over with an envelope in a plastic bag. “Maureen Heseltine, according to this,” he said, then produced another bag. It held a book of matches from the Bunch of Grapes Club, showing a large-breasted woman holding a bunch of plump, ripe purple grapes, her tongue out, as if to lick them suggestively. Banks hadn’t heard of the place. “There was also a drawer full of condoms, all shapes, flavors and sizes. Ribbed and plain. Lager and lime and curry seemed to be her favorite flavors. French ticklers, too. And sex aids. Butt plugs, cock rings, dildos, handcuffs, vibrators. And you should see some of the outfits in her wardrobe. Leather, studs, satin, silk.”
“You know your sex aids,” Banks said.
“Comes with the territory.” The SOCO grinned and walked back to join the others.
“Bunch of Grapes,” said Banks to Verity. “Know it?”
“I know it. It’s pretty new. We’re still keeping an eye on it. Could go either way.”
“Looks like it’s already gone one way to me.”
“That book of matches might have nothing to do with what happened here. It could have been lying around for weeks.”
“It was beside the ashtray,” the SOCO said over his shoulder from the bedroom. “And there are fresh tab ends.”
“Even so,” said Verity.
“Any connection with Micallef?” Banks asked him. “The Bunch of Grapes?”
“He’s been known to drop in on occasion. But he drops in at lots of places. How do we know for sure she’s a working girl?”
The Price of Love and Other Stories Page 35