Banks struggled to remain calm. He knew that the ACC had a point. ‘We’ll investigate all those avenues,’ he said. ‘And any others we may come across. It’s still something of a scattershot approach.’
‘Well, just keep Lady Chalmers out of your sights,’ McLaughlin said. ‘That’s all.’ He got up, dusted off his trousers and stalked out of the office.
‘Ma’am, I—’
‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Gervaise said. ‘You know the lie of the land, Alan. Remember what we talked about the other day. Concentrate on the drugs angle. You’re on a very short leash. Now get back to work and find us a killer.’
In the car heading back to Eastvale, Winsome seemed unusually quiet. Gerry concentrated on the driving, enjoying snatches of countryside every now and then, the lemon and red leaves still clinging to the trees, and replayed the interview in her mind. After a while, she risked a sideways glance. ‘Anything wrong, boss?’
‘No.’
‘You sure? You’re awfully quiet.’
There was a longish pause, then Winsome said, ‘I just wish you hadn’t mentioned Lady Chalmers to Beth Gallagher. That’s all.’
‘But I wanted to see her reaction.’
‘I can understand that, but by mentioning her, you’ve put the idea in Beth’s head that Lady Chalmers might have something to do with the Gavin Miller case.’
‘Well, she might.’
‘Yes, but do you really trust someone like Beth Gallagher to keep her mouth shut, especially after what she just told us? How do you know she won’t go blabbing to the press?’
‘She only told us because she thinks she’s safe now, that we can’t touch her.’
‘We can’t.’
‘I was thinking about that, boss,’ said Gerry after a few moments. ‘Maybe there’s a way we can.’
‘Oh. How?’
‘Well, we can’t prosecute her, right, and we can’t get Gavin Miller his job or his life back, but we could blacken her character with her employers, make sure she suffers for what she’s done by losing her job, like he did, her prospects.’
‘That would be revenge.’
‘But look at what she did. She colluded with her friend to ruin a man’s life because of a worthless drug dealer, and because she thought it would be fun.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Winsome said. ‘That’s not part of our job. Revenge isn’t for us to mete out. If she’s meant to suffer for her sins, it’ll happen without our interference.’
‘What? Like karma?’
‘Something like that.’
‘But isn’t that rather like the story of the drowning man who refused all the help that was offered to him because he believed God would save him, then cried about being abandoned?’
‘And God told him he had been given every opportunity to escape but that he had turned them all down? I don’t really think so. Honestly, Gerry, I’ve thought about it. Believe it or not, I have the same impulse for revenge as you. Those girls deserve to suffer for what they did to Gavin Miller. But we’re not the instruments of that kind of justice. If we could build up some sort of case against her, fair enough, but it’s not our job to go around and tell her employer that we think she once did a bad thing. Beth Gallagher confessed to something we suspected anyway. She only did so because she thought it didn’t matter any more. From now on, it’s between her and her conscience. I’d say she has at least the beginnings of one. She’s certainly not entirely comfortable with what she’s done. Maybe a few sleepless nights is the best punishment we can expect for her.’
‘Are you religious, boss?’
Winsome thought for a moment. ‘No, not really. I mean, I had a religious upbringing, Sunday School and all that, but I don’t go to church or anything. Only weddings, christenings and funerals. Why?’
‘But do you believe in God?’
‘Yeah,’ said Winsome. ‘Yeah, I suppose I do. You?’
‘I don’t know. I try to be a good person.’
Winsome turned and smiled at her. ‘Well, that’s a start.’
‘I wish I shared your certainty about Beth Gallagher having a conscience.’
Winsome glanced at her. ‘I don’t have any more certainty about that than you do,’ she said. ‘Just hope. But I’ll save my anger for the one person who probably could have done something about Miller’s predicament when he was offered the chance.’
‘Trevor Lomax?’
‘Indeed. Left here.’
They sat in silence for a while, and Gerry digested what Winsome had said. ‘There’s probably not much we can do about Lomax, either, you know,’ she said, ‘except try to make him feel guilty, too.’
‘Well, if we can manage that, at least it’s a start, isn’t it.’ Winsome paused. ‘You know what really disappoints me about our trip this afternoon?’
‘No,’ said Gerry. ‘What?’
‘We didn’t see any stars.’
* * *
Banks supposed he was sulking, though he preferred to think of it as nursing his wounds. Either way, he had driven off in a huff after his session with Red Ron and Madame Gervaise. After splashing around some of the more remote dales roads, by fields half submerged in water tinged reddish with mud, he decided that he was hungry. It was after two thirty, so he didn’t expect much in the way of pub grub, but a sandwich would fill the gap nicely, and if he couldn’t get any food, then a pint and a packet of crisps would do.
Turning a tight bend at a dip in an unfenced moorland road running north-west out of Lyndgarth, he came to a pub he had never seen before. At least he thought it was a pub. It didn’t have the most welcoming of facades, only large blocks of weathered limestone darkened by the morning’s showers. Banks could imagine that the walls were probably about three feet thick to survive the wind and cold up here in winter. The swinging sign was so cracked and weather-beaten that he could hardly read it, though he thought it said ‘Low Moor Inn.’ The wind was howling around the moors, but though the ground was boggy, it had the advantage of being high, and much of the moisture had drained off into the system of becks and streams that criss-crossed the lower pastures and fed eventually into the Swain, now close to bursting its banks and flooding the Leas, just outside Eastvale. Up here, there were only the tangled roots of gorse and heather under a huge iron-grey sky; a few sheep wandered, bleating as they searched for anything they could find to eat in the woody undergrowth.
There were three cars outside the pub, which Banks took as a good sign. He parked beside a mud-spattered Range Rover and walked into the arched entrance. A handwritten sign said ‘Walkers Welcome’ with an arrow pointing towards an old boot scraper beside a wooden bench and a rack for muddy boots. The creaky door opened inwards. He had to stoop as he went in, but he found himself in a cosy, stone-walled room with a huge fireplace blazing away, its flames reflected in the polished brasses on the walls and around the bar, in the dark-varnished wood and rows of coloured bottles in front of the long mirror. What little lighting there was in the bar was dim, and the stone walls were decorated with gilt-framed paintings, horse brasses and what Banks assumed to be old-fashioned farming implements. The handful of customers looked up as he entered, then, seeing nothing of interest, returned to their conversations and their drinks. The barman, wearing a scuffed leather waistcoat over a collarless shirt, gave a brisk nod of greeting.
Banks hadn’t known that places such as this existed any more, as if untouched by modern times. So many pubs in the Dales had closed over the past few years, or fallen into the hands of London landlords and breweries who wanted to modernise them, turn them into chain family-style pubs, and get the young crowd back in at night with large-screen football broadcasts and cheap beer. But this place was a throwback. Banks could be happy here. There was no television blaring, no music playing, only the muffled conversations around him and the fire crackling and spitting sparks in the broad stone hearth. A bundle of grey fur that was probably the landlord’s dog lay curled up in front of it. The dog made no investiga
tion of the newcomer. Banks had to look carefully to see that it was breathing.
‘I’ll have a pint of Sneck Lifter, please,’ Banks said, glancing towards the handpump. He didn’t usually drink the stronger beers and ales, but he felt that his sneck needed a bit of lifting after the session with Red Ron and Madame Gervaise. As the man poured, Banks asked if there was any chance of food.
‘Hot pie in t’oven,’ was all the answer he got.
‘What sort of pie?’
The landlord looked at him as if he were gormless. ‘Game pie.’
‘I’ll have a slice of that, too, then,’ Banks said.
‘Tha’ll have to wait till it’s ready.’
‘No problem.’
‘Aye.’ The landlord handed him his pint. Beer and foam dribbled down the glass.
‘By the way,’ Banks asked before going to take his pick of the empty tables. ‘This is the Low Moor Inn, right?’
The landlord scratched his whiskers. ‘That’s what t’sign says.’
‘Where’s the High Moor Inn?’
Again, he got the look reserved for the village idiot as the landlord gestured behind him with his gnarled thumb. ‘Up there, o’course.’
‘Of course,’ said Banks and went to sit down. He decided on a small round wooden table not far from the fire. The floor was unevenly flagged, and his chair legs scraped on the stones as he pulled it out. The table was a bit wobbly, but the slip of paper summoning him to Gervaise’s office, folded and stuck under one of the legs, soon took care of that. He had the latest copy of Gramophone magazine in his briefcase, along with a folder of Gerry Masterson’s notes, so he decided he would just take a long leisurely late lunch away from it all. He also had his mobile, so if there were any developments or emergencies, he could be easily reached. Or so he thought until he checked it for messages and found out there was no reception. Maybe it was the thick stone walls.
For the moment, though, he didn’t care. He was warm, he had a pint in front of him, Gramophone open at the review section on the table, and a piece of hot game pie was on its way. He was also a long way from the office. Despite his rebellious ways, Banks rarely found himself on the carpet. It had happened a lot with Jimmy Riddle, who had been a very hands-on chief constable a few years ago, and had taken against him for some reason, but since then most of the CCs had kept their distance and stayed out at county HQ, where they belonged, sending out press releases, opening village fetes and giving out sound bites, leaving their assistants, like Red Ron, to do most of the real work. He had run afoul of ACC McLaughlin once or twice, but only in minor ways. He liked the man and had never seen him as angry as he had been earlier. It must have been a hell of a bollocking he had got from the CC, who, he remembered, was a good friend of Sir Jeremy and Lady Veronica Chalmers. No doubt he called them Jem and Ronnie.
What rankled most of all was being told to lay off, especially when he thought he was on to something. Madame Gervaise and Red Ron probably thought they had explained away all his suspicions and convinced him that what he thought was evidence was nothing more than a tangle of circumstance, contradiction and coincidence, but a real copper thrives on circumstance, contradiction and coincidence; they are the warning signals he keeps a lookout for. OK, perhaps there was nothing he could prove yet, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that the possible link between Lady Veronica Chalmers and Gavin Miller was a line of inquiry worth pursuing, and Red Ron had closed it off, like Dr Beeching did to the old railway track where Miller’s body had been found.
Banks and his team could take as many easy shots as they liked at the drug dealers and the college crowd, it seemed, as long as they didn’t disturb the landed gentry. But the real truth lay beyond Eastvale College, Banks felt. In his experience, no drug dealer would leave five thousand pounds in a dead man’s pocket, even if he did think he heard someone coming. And nobody talked for seven minutes on the telephone to someone they professed not to know, about a matter he wasn’t even connected with. Not if they had been at the same university at the same time, even if it was forty years ago. Gavin Miller had been more cheerful the week before his death than he had in a long time, so the few witnesses who knew him – such as the Star & Garter staff – had said. And the phone call to Lady Chalmers had been made almost a week before his death. Coincidence? Banks didn’t think so.
So what was the connection? What was the Chalmers family holding back? And more to the point, how could Banks find out? If the matter went back forty years, there wasn’t a lot of hope, and he certainly couldn’t expect any help from Lady Chalmers, even if he was allowed to talk to her. If he were to continue investigating against orders, he would have to rely on Gerry Masterson’s research abilities and risk damaging her career. On the other hand, she was only following the instructions of her SIO. He had given her more or less free rein and saw no reason to curtail that since his warning. It wasn’t as if she was planning on talking to Lady Chalmers, Anthony Litton, Sir Jeremy, or any other members of the family. If she could somehow come up with just one bona fide connection between Lady Chalmers and Gavin Miller from the Essex days, then perhaps Gervaise would reconsider and give Banks a bit more leeway. After all, he wasn’t insisting that Veronica Chalmers had killed Miller, only that she knew something and might be able to help.
In the meantime, there was something he could do. The beautiful Oriana Serroni. Gerry had already dug up a bit of background on her. There was nothing incriminating, nothing to link her with Miller, though her history was certainly interesting and colourful. Her grandfather had spent most of the war as POW in a camp near Malton, in North Yorkshire. Like most of the prisoners there, he hadn’t tried to escape. Life was soft and relatively safe there. Most of the POWs worked on the land, and many of them formed friendships with the local farmers – and the local farmers’ daughters. After the war, like many others, Giuseppe Serroni had remained in the UK and married a local girl, Betty Garfield. They lived on her parents’ farm and soon took over most of the work. They had two sons, the youngest born in 1953. Young Stefano was a restless soul, and in 1974 he left for Italy, where he wanted to explore his roots in Umbria. Time passed, and four years later, he married a local girl called Maria. The couple had several children, including a daughter they named Oriana, born in 1980. Maria wanted to escape the poverty and rural isolation of the place, so Stefano was persuaded to take her back to England with him in 1986, and his parents took them in. They visited Umbria often, though, as Maria missed her family there, and Oriana enjoyed a truly international upbringing.
As it happened, Sir Jeremy Chalmers’ family was also from North Yorkshire and had known the Serronis for years. When Veronica came into the fold, Oriana was only five or six, of course, but she was a beautiful, bright child. Jeremy and Veronica soon became very fond of her, and she became a big sister, and later babysitter, to Angelina and Samantha. As she grew up, Oriana also showed remarkable academic skills, in addition to becoming a very organised and efficient researcher. After university, she drifted a little, uncertain about her career path, and that was when Veronica stepped in and suggested she work as her researcher, and perhaps also take on a few household duties, things she had already done with ease at her own family’s home, such as cooking the occasional meal, organising appointment calendars, keeping the books, and so on. Thus, Oriana became Lady Chalmers’ amanuensis. As far as Gerry Masterson could ascertain, Oriana was still single and didn’t appear to have a steady boyfriend.
Oriana seemed to be close to Lady Chalmers, Banks thought. He had noticed how her attitude had changed between visits, how the smile had disappeared and the frozen demeanour taken its place. She was loyal to her mistress, however old-fashioned that might seem, and that was surely a good thing, but perhaps she was also concerned about Lady Chalmers, and perhaps Banks could exploit that concern. He thought he knew how he could go about contacting her with minimum fuss and little chance of official reprisal, though there was always the risk that Oriana might go running to L
ady Chalmers, Nathan or Anthony Litton.
Interrupting his chain of thought, a short, plump red-faced woman in an apron came over and deposited a knife and fork on his table, along with an assembly of chutneys and bottled sauces, some of the bottles without labels, indicating that they were probably home-made. There was no sign of a serviette. Moments later she returned with a plate, upon which rested the largest slice of pie Banks had ever seen, surrounded by mounds of vegetables covered in steaming gravy. ‘Watch out for t’shot,’ was all she said before she waddled away. As he watched her go, Banks was reminded of the line from the old folk song, the one about ‘the cheeks of her arse going chuff, chuff, chuff’.
Most of the game pies he had ever eaten had been cold, but this was fresh from the oven, and he had to wait a few minutes for it to cool. It was delicious, however, and he soon found out what she meant about the shot, luckily just sensing a piece of buckshot before it broke one of his teeth. He ate even more slowly and carefully after that, not wishing to precipitate a visit to the dentist. The pie was gamey, of course, but not too much so, and the pastry was light and flaky. Banks ate and drank, reading the reviews in Gramophone and making mental notes for his next shopping trip. He would try to talk privately with Oriana, he decided, but before then, he would try to put Lady Chalmers out of his mind and wrap up the Eastvale College angle.
So what next? Banks wondered when he had finished his pie. He certainly didn’t feel like going back to the station. He was too full, for a start, and if he sat in his office chair he would probably doze off. He would finish his pint, he decided, then head out to Coverton, see what was happening with Doug Watson at the mobile unit, maybe have another quick stroll up to the crime scene, see if anything leaped out at him. Then home. It was a plan.
7
‘So what happened to you yesterday afternoon?’ Annie asked Banks on their way to see Trevor Lomax. ‘I tried to call you.’
‘I was out at the crime scene. No reception,’ Banks said. ‘You didn’t call back or leave a message, so it can’t have been important.’
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