Banks wasn’t dressed for the moors, either, and his shoes were soon mud-caked and worse. At least he was wearing his warm sheepskin-lined coat. Though the slope wasn’t steep, it was unrelenting, and he soon got out of breath. Despite the cold wind against his face, he was sweating.
At last, the ground flattened out into high moorland. Crocker stopped and waited with a smile for Banks to catch up.
“By heck, lad, what’d tha do if tha ’ad to chase after a villain?”
“Luckily, it doesn’t happen often,” Banks wheezed.
“Aye. Well, this is where I found it. Just down there in t’grass.” He pointed with his crook. Banks bent and poked around among the sods. There was nothing to indicate the knife had been there.
“It looks like someone just threw it there,” he said.
Crocker nodded. “It would’ve been easy enough to hide,” he said. “Plenty of rocks to stuff it under. He could’ve even buried it if he’d wanted.”
“But he didn’t. So whoever it was must have panicked, perhaps, and just tossed it away.”
“Tha should know.”
Banks looked around. The spot was about two miles from Eastvale; the jagged castle battlements were just visible in the distance, down in the hollow where the town lay. In the opposite direction, also about two miles away, he could see the house and outbuildings of Maggie’s Farm.
It looked like the knife had been thrown away on the wild moorland about halfway or more on a direct line between Eastvale and the farm. If someone from the farm had escaped arrest or injury at the demo, it would have been a natural direction in which to run home. That meant Paul or Zoe, as Rick and Seth had been arrested and searched. It could even have been the woman, Mara, who might have been lying about staying home all evening.
On the other hand, anyone could have come up there in the past few days and thrown the knife away. That seemed much less likely, though, as it was a poor method of disposal, more spontaneous than planned. Certainly it seemed to make mincemeat of one of Banks’s theories—that a fellow policeman might have committed the murder. Again, the finger seemed to be pointing at Maggie’s Farm.
Banks pulled the sheepskin collar tight around his neck and screwed up his eyes to keep the tears from forming. No wonder Crocker’s eyes were hooded almost shut. There was nothing more to be done up here, he decided, but he would have to mark the spot in some way.
“Could you find this place again?” he asked.
“’Course,” the shepherd answered.
Banks couldn’t see how; there was nothing to distinguish it from any other spot of moorland. Still, it was Crocker’s job to be familiar with every square inch of his territory.
He nodded. “Right. We may have to get a few men up here to make a more thorough search. Where can I get in touch with you?”
“I live in Mortsett.” Crocker gave him the address.
“Are you coming back down?”
“Nay. More ewes to fetch in. It’s lambing season, tha knows.”
“Yes, well, thanks again for your time.”
Crocker nodded curtly and set off further up the slope, walking just as quickly and effortlessly as if he were on the flat. At least, Banks thought, turning around, it would be easier going down. But before he had even completed the thought, he caught his foot in a patch of heather and fell face forward. He cursed, brushed himself off and carried on. Fortunately, Crocker had been going the other way and hadn’t seen his little accident, otherwise it would have been the talk of the dale by evening.
He got back over the stile without further incident and nipped into the Black Sheep for another quick pint and a warm-up. There was nothing he could do now but wait for Burgess to finish at the lab. Even then, there might be no results. But a nice set of sweaty fingerprints on a smooth surface could survive the most terrible weather conditions, and Banks thought he had glimpsed flecks of dried blood in the joint between blade and handle.
EIGHT
I
A sudden, heavy shower drove the merchants from the market square. It was almost time to pack up and leave anyway; market days in winter and early spring were often cold and miserable affairs. But the rain stopped as quickly as it started, and in no time the sun was out again. Wet cobblestones reflected the muted bronze light, which slid into the small puddles and danced as the wind ruffled them.
The gold hands on the blue face of the church clock stood at four-twenty. Burgess hadn’t returned from the lab yet. Banks sat waiting by his window, the awkward venetian blind drawn up, and looked down on the scene as he smoked and drank black coffee. People crossed the square and splashed through the puddles that had gathered where cobbles had been worn or broken away. Everyone wore grey plastic macs or brightly coloured slickers, as if they didn’t trust the sun to stay out, and many carried umbrellas. It would soon be dark. Already the sun cast the long shadow of the Tudor-fronted police headquarters over the square.
At a quarter to five, Banks heard a flurry of activity outside his office, and Burgess bounded in carrying a buff folder.
“They came through,” he said. “Took them long enough, but they did it—a clear set of prints and a match with Gill’s blood type. No doubt about it, that was the knife. I’ve already got DC Richmond running a check on the prints. If they’re on record we’re in business.”
He lit a Tom Thumb and smoked, tapping it frequently on the edge of the ashtray whether or not a column of ash had built up. Banks went back to the window. The shadow had lengthened; across the square, secretaries and clerks on their way home dropped in at Joplin’s newsagent’s for their evening papers, and young couples walked hand in hand into the El Toro coffee bar to tell one another about the ups and downs of their day at the office.
When Richmond knocked and entered, Burgess jumped to his feet. “Well?”
Richmond stroked his moustache. He could barely keep the grin of triumph from his face. “It’s Boyd,” he said, holding out the charts. “Paul Boyd. Eighteen points of comparison. Enough to stand up in court.”
Burgess clapped his hands. “Right! Just as I thought. Let’s go. You might as well come along, Constable. Where’s Sergeant Hatchley?”
“I don’t know, sir. I think he’s still checking some of the witness reports.”
“Never mind. Three’s enough. Let’s bring Boyd in for a chat.”
They piled into Banks’s Cortina and headed for Maggie’s Farm. Banks played no music this time; the three of them sat in tense silence as the river-meadows rolled by, eerie in the misty twilight. Gravel popped under the wheels as they approached the farm, and the front curtain twitched when they drew up outside the building.
Mara Delacey opened the door before Burgess had finished knocking. “What do you want this time?” she asked angrily, but stood aside to let them in. They followed her through to the kitchen, where the others sat at the table eating dinner. Mara went back to her half-finished meal. Julian and Luna shifted closer to her.
“How convenient,” Burgess said, leaning against the humming refrigerator. “You’re all here together, except one. We’re looking for Paul Boyd. Is he around?”
Seth shook his head. “No. I’ve no idea where he is.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Last night, I suppose. I’ve been out most of the day. He wasn’t here when I came back.”
Burgess looked at Mara. Nobody said anything. “One of you must know where he is. What’s it to be—now or down at the station?”
Still silence.
Burgess walked forward to pat Julian on the head, but the boy pulled a face and buried his head in Rick’s side. “It’d be a shame,” Burgess said, “if things got so that you couldn’t look after the kids here and they had to be taken away.”
“You’d never dare!” Mara said, her face flushed. “Even you can’t be as much of a bastard as that.”
Burgess raised his left eyebrow. “Can’t I, love? Are you sure you want to find out? Where’s Boyd?”
Rick got to his feet. He was as tall as Burgess and a good thirty pounds heavier. “Pick on someone your own size,” he said. “If you start messing with my kid’s life, you’ll bloody well have me to answer to.”
Burgess sneered and turned away. “I’m quaking in my boots. Where’s Boyd?”
“We don’t know,” Seth said quietly. “He wasn’t a prisoner here, you know. He pays his board, he’s free to do what he wants and to come and go as he pleases.”
“Not any more he isn’t,” Burgess said. “Maybe you’d better get Gypsy Rose Lee here to ask the stars where he is, because if we don’t find him soon it’s going to be very hard on you lot.” He turned to Banks and Richmond. “Let’s have a look around. Where’s his room?”
“First on the left at the top of the stairs,” Seth said. “But you’re wasting your time. He’s not there.”
The three policemen climbed the narrow staircase. Richmond checked the other rooms while Banks and Burgess went into Paul’s. There was only room for a single mattress on the floor and a small dresser at the far end, where a narrow window looked towards Eastvale. Sheets and blankets lay rumpled and creased on the unmade bed; dirty socks and underwear had been left in a pile on the floor. A stale smell of dead skin and unwashed clothes hung in the air. A couple of jackets, including a parka, hung in the tiny cupboard, and a pair of scuffed loafers lay on the floor. There was nothing much in the dresser drawers besides some clean underwear, T-shirts and a couple of moth-eaten pullovers. A grubby paperback copy of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow over Innsmouth lay open, face down on the pillow. On the cover was a picture of a semi-transparent, frog-faced monster dressed in what looked like an evening suit. Out of habit, Banks picked the book up and flipped through the pages to see if Boyd had written anything interesting in the margins or on the blank pages at the back. He found nothing. Richmond came in and joined them.
“There’s nothing here,” Burgess said. “It doesn’t look like he’s scarpered, though, unless he had a lot more clothes than this. I’d have taken a parka and a couple of sweaters if I’d been him. What was the weather like on the night Gill was stabbed?”
“Cool and wet,” Banks answered.
“Parka weather?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
Burgess took the coat from the closet and examined it. He pulled the inside of each pocket out in turn, and when he got to the right one, he pointed out a faint discoloured patch to Banks. “Your men must have missed this the other day. Could be blood. He must have put the knife back in his pocket after he killed Gill. Hang on to this, Richmond. We’ll get it to the lab. Why don’t you two go have a look in the outbuildings? You never know, he might be hiding in the woodpile. I’ll poke around a bit more up here.”
Downstairs, Banks and Richmond went back into the kitchen and got Mara to accompany them with the keys. They left by the back door and found themselves in a large rectangular garden with a low fence. Most of the place was given over to rows of vegetables—dark empty furrows at that time of year—but there was also a small square sand-box, on which a plastic lorry with big red wheels and a yellow bucket and spade lay abandoned. At the far end of the garden stood a brick building with an asphalt roof, just a little larger than a garage, and to their left was a gate that led to the barn.
“We’ll have a look over there first,” Banks said to Mara, who fiddled with the key-ring as she followed them to the converted barn. It wasn’t a big place, nowhere the size of many that had been converted into bunk barns for tourists, but it followed the traditional Dales design, on the outside at least, in that it was built of stone.
Mara opened the door to the downstairs unit first, Zoe’s flat. Banks was surprised at the transformation from humble barn into comfortable living-quarters; Seth had done a really good job. The woodwork was mostly unpainted, and if it looked a little makeshift, it was certainly sturdy and attractive in its simplicity. Not only, he gathered, did each unit have its own entrance, but there were cooking and bathing facilities, too, as well as a large, sparsely furnished living-room, one master bedroom, and a smaller one for Luna. But there was no sign of Paul Boyd.
The places were perfectly self-contained, Banks noticed, and if Rick and Zoe hadn’t become friendly with Seth and Mara, they could easily have led quite separate lives there. Noting Mara’s reaction to Burgess’s threat, and remembering what Jenny had said at dinner, Banks guessed that Mara’s fondness for the children was one unifying factor—anyone would be glad of a built-in baby-sitter—and perhaps another was their shared politics.
Upstairs, the layout was different. Both bedrooms were quite small, and most of the space was taken up by Rick’s studio, which was much less tidy than Zoe’s large work-table downstairs, with books and charts spread out on its surface. Seth had added three skylights along the length of the roof to provide plenty of light, and canvases, palettes and odd tubes of paint littered the place. From what Banks could see, Rick Trelawney’s paintings were, as Tim Fenton had said, unmarketable, being mostly haphazard splashes of colour, or collages of found objects. Sandra knew quite a bit about art, and Banks had learned from her that many paintings he wouldn’t even store in the attic were regarded by experts as works of genius. But these were different, even he could tell; they made Jackson Pollock’s angry explosions look as comprehensible as Constable’s landscapes.
As he poked around among the stuff, though, Banks discovered a stack of small water-colour landscapes covered with an old sack. They resembled the one he’d noticed in the front room on his last visit, and he realized that they were, after all, Rick’s work. So that was how he made his money! Selling pretty local scenes to tourists and little old ladies to support his revolutionary art.
Mara, who all the time had remained quiet, watching them with her arms folded, locked up as they left and led the way back to the house.
“You two go ahead,” Banks said when he had closed the gate behind them. “I’m off to take a peek in the shed. It’s not locked, is it?”
Mara shook her head and went back into the house with Richmond.
Banks opened the door. The shed was dark inside and smelled of wood shavings, sawdust, oiled metal, linseed oil and varnish. He tugged the chain dangling in front of him, and a naked bulb lit up, revealing Seth’s workshop. Planks, boards and pieces of furniture at various stages of incompletion leaned against the walls. Spider webs hung in the dark corners. Seth had a lathe and a full set of well-kept tools—planes, saws, hammers, bevels—and boxes of nails and screws rested on makeshift wooden shelves around the walls. There was no room for anyone to hide.
At the far end of the workshop, an old Remington office typewriter sat on a desk beside an open filing cabinet. Inside, Banks found only correspondence connected with Seth’s carpentry business: estimates, invoices, receipts, orders. Close by was a small bookcase. Most of the books were about antique furniture and cabinet-making techniques, but there were a couple of old paperback novels and two books on the human brain, one of which was called The Tip of the Iceberg. Maybe, Banks thought, Seth harboured a secret ambition to become a brain surgeon. Already a carpenter, he probably had a better start than most.
He walked back to the door and was about to turn off the light when he noticed a tattered notebook on a ledge by the door. It was full of measurements, addresses and phone numbers—obviously Seth’s workbook. When he flipped through it, he noticed that one leaf had been torn out roughly. The following page still showed the faint impression of heavily scored numbers. Banks took a sheet from his own notebook, placed it on top and rubbed over it with a pencil. He could just make out the number in relief: 1139. It was hard to tell if it was in the same handwriting as the rest because the numbers were so much larger and more exaggerated.
Picking up the workbook, he turned to leave and almost bumped into Seth standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing?”
“This book,” Banks said. “What do you use it for?”
“Work notes. When I need
to order new materials, make measurements, note customers’ addresses. That kind of thing.”
“There’s a page missing.” Banks showed him. “What does that mean—1139?”
“Surely you can’t expect me to remember that,” Seth said. “It must have been a long time ago. It was probably some measurement or other.”
“Why did you tear it out?”
Seth looked at him, deep-set brown eyes wary and resentful. “I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t important. Maybe I’d written something on the back that I had to take with me somewhere. It’s just an old notebook.”
“But there’s only one page missing. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“I’ve already said it doesn’t.”
“Did you tear out the page to give to Paul Boyd? Is it a number for him to call? Part of an address?”
“No. I’ve told you, I don’t remember why I tore it out. It obviously wasn’t very important.”
“I’ll have to take this notebook away with me.”
“Why?”
“There are names and addresses in it. We’ll have to check and see if Boyd’s gone to any of them. As I understand it, he did spend quite a bit of time working with you in here.”
“But it’s my notebook. Why would he be at any of those places? They’re just people who live in the dale, people I’ve done work for. I don’t want the police bothering them. It could lose me business.”
“We still have to check.”
Seth swore under his breath. “Please yourself. You’d better give me a receipt, though.”
Banks wrote him one, then pulled the chain to turn off the light. They walked back to the house in silence.
Seth sat down again to finish his meal and Mara followed Banks towards the front of the room. They could hear Burgess and Richmond still poking about upstairs.
“Mr Banks?” Mara said quietly, standing close to him near the window.
Banks lit a cigarette. “Yes?”
“What he said about the children . . . It’s not true, is it? Surely he can’t . . .”
A Necessary End Page 15