“It wasn’t anything like one of the men who came around asking questions?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right.”
“What’s going on?”
“We don’t know,” Banks lied. He was testing Gristhorpe’s theory about Clegg’s involvement in Rothwell’s murder, but he didn’t want Betty Moorhead to realize he suspected her boss of such a crime. Certainly the odd phone calls could have been from someone giving him orders, or from the people he hired to do the job. The timing was about right. “Do you think Mr Clegg might have given this caller his private number?”
She nodded. “That’s what must have happened. The first two times, Mr Clegg was out or with a client. The third time, I put the caller through, and he never called me again.”
“And you’re sure you never put a face to the voice?”
“No.”
Banks stood up and walked around the small room. Well-tended potted plants stood on the shelf by the small window at the back that looked out onto narrow Park Cross Street. Clegg had obviously been careful where Betty Moorhead was concerned. If he had been mixed up with hired killers and Caribbean dictators, he had been careful to keep them at arm’s length. He turned back to Betty. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Mr Clegg?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“How would you describe him as a person?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know.”
“You never socialized?”
She blushed. “Certainly not.”
“Had he been depressed lately?”
“No.”
“Did Mr Clegg have many women calling on him?”
“Not as far as I know. What are you suggesting?”
“Did you ever see or hear mention of a woman called Pamela Jeffreys? An Asian woman.”
She looked puzzled. “No. She wasn’t a client.”
“Did he have a girlfriend?”
“I wouldn’t know. He kept his private life private.”
Banks decided to give up. Melissa Clegg might know a bit more about her husband’s conquests, or Ken Blackstone’s men would question his colleagues and perhaps come up with something. It was after five and he was tired of running around in circles. Betty Moorhead clearly didn’t know anything else, or if she did she didn’t realize its importance. Getting at information like that was like target practice in the dark.
Why not just accept Gristhorpe’s theory that Clegg had arranged for Rothwell to be killed, and that they hadn’t a hope in hell of finding either Clegg or the killers? And what could they do to Martin Churchill, if indeed he was behind it all? Banks didn’t like the feeling of impotence this case was beginning to engender.
On the walk back to his hotel, Banks picked up a half-bottle of Bell’s. It would be cheaper than using the minibar in his room. As he threaded his way among the office workers leaving the British Telecom Building for their bus-stops on Wellington Street, Banks wished he could just go home and forget about the whole Clegg-Rothwell-Calvert mess.
After leaving Blackstone at the car park, he had phoned Pamela Jeffreys at home, half-hoping she might be free for a drink that evening, but he had only got her answering machine. She was probably playing with the orchestra or something. He had left a message anyway, telling her which hotel he was staying at, and now he was feeling guilty. He remembered Blackstone’s warning about hotels.
On the surface, he wanted to apologize for their misunderstanding yesterday, but if truth be told, he had let himself get a bit too carried away with his fantasies. Would he do anything if he had the chance? If she agreed to come back to his hotel room for a nightcap, would he try to seduce her? Would he make love to her if she were willing? He didn’t know.
He remembered his attraction to Jenny Fuller, a professor of psychology who occasionally helped with cases, and wondered what his life would be like now if he had given in to his desires then. Would he have told Sandra? Would they still be together? Would he and Jenny still be friends? No answer came.
Rather glumly, he recalled the bit at the beginning of the Trollope biography he was reading, where Trollope considers the dreary sermons persuading people to turn their backs on worldly pleasure in the hope of heaven to come and asks, if such is really the case, then “Why are women so lovely?” That set him thinking again about Pamela’s shapely, golden body, her bright personality and her passion for music. Well, at least he had a curry with Ken Blackstone to look forward to, and time for a shower and a rest before that. He thought he might even check out the hotel’s Health and Leisure Club, maybe have a swim, take a sauna or a whirlpool.
There were no messages. Banks went straight up to his room, took off his shoes and flopped on the bed. He phoned Sandra, who wasn’t in, then called the Eastvale station again and spoke to Susan Gay. Nothing new, except that she sounded depressed.
After a brisk shower, much better than the tepid dribble at home, he poured himself a small Scotch and put the television on while he dried off and dressed. He caught the end of the international news and heard that the St Corona riots had been put down swiftly and brutally by Martin Churchill’s forces. And Burgess wanted to give the man a retirement villa in Cornwall?
After that, he was only half paying attention to the local news, but at one point, he saw a house he recognized and heard the reporter say, “… when she failed to report for rehearsals today. Police are still at the scene and so far have refused to comment …”
It was Pamela Jeffreys’s house, and outside it stood two patrol cars and an ambulance. Stunned, Banks sat on the side of the bed and tossed back his Scotch, then he got his jacket out of the cupboard and left the room so fast he forgot to turn off the television.
TEN
I
It was hard to imagine that anything terrible could happen on such a fine spring evening, but the activity around the little terrace house in Armley indicated that evil made no allowances for the weather.
Three police cars were parked at angles in front of the house. Beyond the line of white tape, reporters badgered the PCs on guard duty, one of whom jotted down Banks’s name and rank before he let him through. Neighbours stood on their doorsteps or by privet hedges and gazed in silence, arms folded, faces grim, and the people working their allotments stopped to watch the spectacle. A small crowd also stood gawping from the steps of the Sikh Temple down the street.
Banks stood on the threshold of the living-room. Whatever had happened here, it had been extremely violent: the glass coffee-table had been smashed in two; the three-piece suite had been slashed and the stuffing ripped out; books lay torn all over the carpet, pages reduced to confetti; the glass front of the cocktail cabinet was shattered and the crystalware itself lay in bright shards; the music stand lay on the floor with the splintered pieces and broken bow of Pamela’s viola beside it; even the print of Ganesh over the fireplace had been taken from its frame and torn up. Worst of all, though, was the broad dark stain on the cream carpet. Blood.
One of the officers cracked a racist joke about Ganesh and another laughed. The elephant god was supposed to be the god of good beginnings, Banks remembered. Upstairs, someone was whistling “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago.
“Who the hell are you?”
Banks turned to face the plainclothes man coming out of wreckage of the kitchen.
“Press?” he went on before Banks had time to answer. “You’re not allowed in. You ought to bloody well know that. Bugger off.” He grabbed Banks’s arm and steered him towards the door. “What does that fucking useless PC think he’s up to, letting you in? I’ll have his bloody balls for Christmas tree decorations.”
“Hang on.” Banks finally managed to get a word in and jerk his arm free of the man’s grasp. He showed his card. The man relaxed.
“Oh. Sorry, sir,” he said. “Detective Sergeant Waltham. I wasn’t to know.” Then he frowned. “What’s North Yorkshire want with this one, if you don’t
mind my asking?”
He was in his early thirties, perhaps a few pounds overweight, about three inches taller than Banks, with curly ginger hair. He had a prominent chin, a ruddy complexion and curious catlike green eyes. He wore a dark brown suit, white shirt and plain green tie. Behind him stood a scruffy-looking youth in a leather jacket. Probably his DC, Banks guessed.
“First things first,” said Banks. “What happened to the woman who lives here?”
“Pamela Jeffreys. Know her?”
“What happened to her? Is she still alive?”
“Oh, aye, sir. Just. Someone worked her over a treat. Broken ribs, broken nose, broken fingers. Multiple lacerations, contusions. In fact, multiple just about everything. And it looks as if she broke her leg when she fell. She was in a coma when we found her. First officer on the scene thought she was dead.”
Banks felt a wave of fear and anger surge through his stomach, bringing the bile to his throat. “When did it happen?” he asked.
“We’re not sure, sir. There’s a clock upstairs was smashed at twenty past nine, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. A bit too Agatha Christie, if you ask me. Doc thinks last night, but we’re still interviewing the neighbours.”
“So you think she lay there for nearly twenty-four hours?”
“Could be, sir. The doctor said she’d have bled to death if she hadn’t been a good clotter.”
Banks swallowed. “Raped?”
Waltham shook his head. “Doc says no signs of sexual assault. When we found her she was fully clothed, no signs of interference. Some consolation, eh?”
“Who found her?”
“One of her musician friends got worried when she didn’t show up for rehearsals this morning. Some sort of string quartet or something. Apparently she’d been a bit upset lately. He said she was usually reliable and had never missed a day before. He phoned the house several times during the day and only got her answering machine. After work he drove by and knocked. Still no answer. Then he had a butcher’s through the window. After that, he phoned the local police. He’s in the clear.”
Banks said nothing. DS Waltham leaned against the bannister. The scruffy DC squeezed by them and went upstairs. In the front room, someone laughed out loud again.
Waltham coughed behind his hand. “Er, look, sir, is there something we should know? There’ll have to be questions, of course, but we can be as discreet as anyone if we have to be. What with you showing up here and …”
“And what, Sergeant?”
“Well, I recognize your voice from her answering machine. It was you, wasn’t it?”
Banks sighed. “Yes, yes it was. But no, there’s nothing you need to be discreet about. There is probably a lot you should know. Shit.” He looked at his watch. Almost seven. “Look, Sergeant, I’d clean forgot I’m supposed to be meeting DI Blackstone for dinner.”
“Our DI Blackstone, sir?”
“Yes. Know him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you think you can get one of the PCs to page him or track him down. It’s the Shabab on Eastgate.”
Waltham smiled. “I know it. Very popular with the lads at Millgarth. I’ll see to it, sir.”
He went to the door and spoke to one of the uniformed constables, then came back. “He’s on his way. Look, sir, PC O’Brien there just told me there’s an old geezer across the street thinks he might have seen something. Want to come over?”
“Yes. Very much.” Banks followed him down the path and through the small crowd. One or two reporters shouted for comments, but Waltham just waved them aside. PC O’Brien stood by the low, dark stone wall that ran by the allotments, talking to a painfully thin old man wearing a grubby, collarless shirt. Behind them, other allotment workers stood in a semi-circle, watching, some of them leaning on shovels or rakes. Very Yorkshire Gothic, Banks thought.
“Mr Judd, sir,” O’Brien said, introducing Waltham, who, in turn, introduced Banks. “He was working his allotment last night just before dark.” Waltham nodded and O’Brien walked off. “Keep those bloody reporters at bay, will you, please, O’Brien?” Waltham called after him.
Banks sat on the wall and took out his cigarettes. He offered them around. Waltham declined, but Mr Judd accepted one. “Might as well, lad,” he croaked, tapping his chest. “Too late to worry about my health now.”
He did look ill, Banks thought. Sallow flesh hung off the bones of his face above his scrawny neck with its turkey-flaps and puckered skin, like a surgery scar, around his Adam’s apple. The whites of his eyes had a yellow cast, but the dark blue pupils glinted with intelligence. Mr Judd, Banks decided, was a man whose observations he could trust. He sat by and let Waltham do the questioning.
“What time were you out here?” Waltham asked.
“From seven o’clock till about half past nine,” said Judd. “This time of year I always come out of an evening after tea for a bit of peace, weather permitting. The wife likes to watch telly, but I’ve no patience with it, myself. Nowt but daft buggers acting like daft buggers.” He took a deep draw on the cigarette. Banks noticed him flinch with pain.
“Were you the only one working here?” Waltham asked.
“Aye. T’others had all gone home by then.”
“Can you tell us what you saw?”
“Aye, well it must have been close to knocking-off time. It were getting dark, I remember that. And this car pulled up outside Miss Jeffreys’s house. Dark and shiny, it were. Black.”
“Do you know what make?”
“No, sorry, lad. I wouldn’t know a Mini from an Aston Martin these days, to tell you the truth, especially since we’ve been getting all these foreign cars. It weren’t a big one, though.”
Waltham smiled. “Okay. Go on.”
“Well, two men gets out and walks up the path.”
“What did they look like?”
“Hard to say, really. They were both wearing suits. And one of them was a darkie, but that’s nowt to write home about these days, is it?”
“One of the men was black?”
“Aye.”
“What happened next?”
Judd went through a minor coughing fit and spat a ball of red-green phlegm on the earth beside him. “I packed up and went home. The wife needs a bit of help getting up the apples and pears to bed these days. She can’t walk as well as she used to.”
“Did you see Miss Jeffreys open the door and let the men in?”
“I can’t say I was watching that closely. One minute they were on the doorstep, next they were gone. But the car was still there.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“No. Too far away.” He shrugged. “I thought nothing of it. Insurance men, most like. That’s what they looked like. Or maybe those religious folks, Jehovah’s Witnesses.”
“So you didn’t see them leave?”
“No. I’d gone home by then.”
“Where do you live?”
Judd pointed across the street. “Over there. Number fourteen.” It was five houses down from Pamela Jeffreys’s. “Been there forty years or more, now. A right dump it was when we first moved in. Damp walls, no indoor toilets, no bathroom. Had it done up over the years, though, bit by bit.”
Waltham paused and looked at Banks, who indicated he would like to ask one or two questions. Waltham, Banks noted, had been a patient interviewer, not pushy, rude and condescending towards the old, like some. Maybe it was because he had a DCI watching over his shoulder. And maybe that was being uncharitable.
“Did you know Miss Jeffreys at all?” Banks asked.
Judd shook his head. “Can’t say as I did.”
“But you knew her to say hello to?”
“Oh, aye. She was a right nice lass, if you ask me. And a bonny one, too.” He winked. “Always said hello if she passed me in the street. Always carrying that violin case. I used to ask her if she were in t’mafia and had a machine-gun in it, just joking, like.”
“But you never stopped and chatted
?”
“Not apart from that and the odd comment about the weather. What would an old codger like me have to say to a young lass like her? Besides, people round here tend to keep themselves to themselves these days.” He coughed and spat again. “It didn’t used to be that way, tha knows. When Eunice and I first came here there used to be a community. We’d have bloody great big bonfires out in the street on Guy Fawkes night—it were still just cobbles, then, none of this tarmac—and everyone came out. Eunice would make parkin and treacle-toffee. We’d wrap taties in foil and put ’em in t’fire to bake. But it’s all changed. People died, moved away. See that there Sikh Temple?” He pointed down the street. “It used to be a Congregationalist Chapel. Everyone went there on a Sunday morning. They had Monday whist drives, too, and a youth club, Boys’ Brigade and Girl Guides for the young uns. Pantos at Christmas.
“Oh, aye, it’s all changed. People coming and going. We’ve got indoor toilets now, but nobody talks to anyone. Not that I’ve owt against Pakis, like. As I said, she was a nice lass. I saw them taking her out on that stretcher an hour or so back.” He shook his head slowly. “Nowadays you keep your door locked tight. Will she be all right?”
“We don’t know,” Banks said. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed. Did she have many visitors?”
“I didn’t keep a look out. I suppose you mean boyfriends?”
“Anyone. Male or female.”
“I never saw any women call, not by themselves. Her mum and dad came now and then. At least, I assumed it was her mum and dad. And there was one bloke used to visit quite regularly a few months back. Used to park outside our house sometimes. And don’t ask me what kind of car he drove. I can’t even remember the colour. But he stopped coming. Hasn’t been anyone since, not that I’ve noticed.”
“What did this man look like?”
“Ordinary really. Fair hair, glasses, a bit taller than thee.”
Keith Rothwell—or Robert Calvert, Banks thought. “Anyone else?”
Judd shook his head then smiled. “Only you and that young woman, t’other day.”
Final Account Page 18