Seth shook his head. “Somehow I don’t think so, no. He just has a different technique.”
“They’re all bastards when you get right down to it,” Rick added. Paul agreed. “So what’s been happening here?” he asked.
Seth filled him in on the police visits. “Apart from that, not much really. We’ve all been worrying about you most of the time.” He ruffled Paul’s hair. “Glad you’re back, kid. Nice new haircut, too.”
Paul blushed. “Fuck off. Anyway, nothing’s changed, has it?”
“What do you mean?” Mara asked.
“Well, they still don’t have their killer and they’re not going to stop till they do. And if they don’t get someone else, I’m still their best bet. That Burgess bastard made that quite clear.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Seth said. “We won’t let them blame it on you.”
Paul looked at his watch. “Nearly opening time,” he said. “I could do with a pint and some nosh.”
“We’ll have to eat at the pub today, anyway,” Mara said. “I’ve not made any dinner. What with that meeting and all. . . .”
“What meeting?” Paul asked.
“We’re getting together to talk about the demo this afternoon,”
Rick said. “Dennis is bringing Tim and Abha up about three. We want to look over statements and stuff to prove police brutality.”
“Well you can count me out,” Paul said. “I’ve had enough of that bleeding demo, and those fucking do-gooders. Sod ’em all.”
“You don’t have to stick around,” Mara told him. “Not if you don’t want.”
“I think I’ll go for a walk,” Paul said, calming down. “Being cooped up in that cell hasn’t done my head much good.”
“And I’ve got work to do,” Seth said. “I’ve got to finish that bureau today. It’s already overdue.”
“What’s this?” Rick said. “Is everybody copping out on us?”
“I’ll put my two penn’orth in, first, don’t worry,” Seth said. “Then I’ll get some work done. As for now, I think Paul’s right. They do a nice Sunday lunch at the Black Sheep and I’m starving.”
Seth put his arm around Paul. The others stood up and went for their coats. In the fresh spring air, the seven of them walked down the track to Relton, happy together for the last time.
Except for Mara. The others might realize it, too, she thought, but nobody’s saying anything. If Paul isn’t guilty, then someone else here is.
III
Jenny was already waiting when Banks came into the Queen’s Arms at lunch-time. Hungry, he arranged with Cyril for a few slices of roast leg of lamb. Glenys wasn’t around, and Cyril, though he said nothing, seemed distracted.
“So,” Jenny said, resting her elbows on the table and cupping her chin in her hands, “what’s new? Dennis told me you dropped by. Thanks for going.”
“He didn’t thank me.”
Jenny smiled. “Well, he wouldn’t, would he?”
“You didn’t tell me it was you who persuaded him to talk to me in the first place.”
The lines around her eyes crinkled. “Didn’t I? Sorry. But did you find anything out?”
“Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no, I suppose. Have you ever noticed a blue Escort with two burly men in it hanging around Osmond’s place?”
“No. Haven’t you got any ideas, Alan?”
“Maybe one. It seems a bit far-fetched, but if I’m right. . . .”
“Right about what?”
“Just an idea, that’s all.”
“Can you tell me?”
“I’d rather not. Best wait and see. Richmond’s working on it.”
“When will you know?”
“Tomorrow, I hope.”
The food arrived. “I’m starving,” Jenny said, and the two ate in silence.
When he’d finished, Banks bought another round of drinks and lit a cigarette. Then he explained his doubts about Paul Boyd’s guilt.
“Are you any closer to catching the real killer?” Jenny asked.
“It doesn’t look like it. Boyd’s still the closest we’ve got.”
“I can’t believe that Dennis is a murderer, you know.”
“Are you speaking as a psychologist?”
“No. As a woman.”
“I think I’d trust that opinion more if it came from a professional.”
Jenny arched her eyebrows. “What do you mean by that?”
“Don’t bristle, it doesn’t suit you. I mean that people—men and women—tend to be very protective about whoever they get involved with. It’s only natural—you know that as well as I do. And not only that, but they deliberately blinker themselves sometimes, even lie. Look what Boyd did. If he really is innocent of murder, then he sure as hell risked a lot. And think about how Mara behaved. Whichever way you look at it now, it comes down to Seth, Rick or Zoe—with Mara, Tim and Abha, and your Dennis running close behind.”
“All right. As a professional, I don’t think Dennis did it.”
“Just how much do you know about him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
“What? Come on. Out with it. If there’s something I should know, tell me.”
Banks took a deep breath. “Would you say Osmond is the kind of person to hit women?”
“What?”
Haltingly, Banks told her about Ellen Ventner. The more he said, the paler she became. Even as he told her, Banks wasn’t sure of his motives. Was he doing it because he was worried about her association with Osmond, or was it out of pure vindictive jealousy?
“I don’t believe it,” she whispered.
“Believe it. It’s true.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I didn’t want to tell you. You pushed me into it.”
“It was you who made me push you. You must have known how bloody humiliated it would make me feel.”
Banks shrugged. He could feel her starting to turn her anger against him. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I intended. He could be dangerous, Jenny. And I don’t know about you, but I have problems understanding a person who rescues defenceless women from police brutality in public and beats them up in private.”
“You said it only happened once. There’s no need to go making him into a monster. What do you expect me to do? Chuck him over just because he made a mistake?”
“I expect you to be careful, that’s all. Osmond hit a woman once, put her in hospital, and he’s also a suspect in a murder investigation. In addition, he seems to think the CIA, the KGB and MI5 are all after him. I’d say that merits a little caution, wouldn’t you?”
Jenny’s eyes glittered. “You’ve never liked Dennis right from the start, have you? You’ve never even given him a chance. And now as soon as you find a bit of dirt on him, you sling it at me. Just what the bloody hell do you hope to achieve, Alan? You’re not my keeper. I can take care of myself. I don’t need a big brother to look out for me.”
She picked up her coat and swept out of the pub, knocking over her glass as she went. Faces turned to stare and Banks felt himself flush. Good one, Alan, he said to himself, you handled that really well.
He followed her outside, but she was nowhere in sight. Cursing, he went back to his office and tried to occupy his mind with work.
After a couple of false starts, he finally got through to Rick’s wife’s sister at her home in Camden Town. She sounded cagey and Banks first had to assure her that his call had nothing at all to do with the custody battle. Even then, she didn’t sound as if she believed him.
“I just need some information about Rick’s wife, that’s all,” he said. “Were you always good friends?”
“Yes,” the sister answered. “Our ages are close, so we always supported one another, even after she married Rick. I don’t want you to think I’ve anything against him, by the way. He’s selfish and egotistical, but then most men are. Artists even more s
o. And I’m sure he’s a good father. Pam certainly wasn’t capable of taking care of Julian when they split up.”
“And now?”
“She’s getting there. It’s a long road, though, alcoholism.”
“Did Pam ever have any connections up north?”
“Up north? Good Lord, no. I don’t think she’s ever been farther north than Hendon.”
“Not even for a visit?”
“No. What’s there to visit, anyway? It’s all canals and slag heaps, isn’t it?”
“So she’s spent most of her life in either London or Cornwall?”
“Yes. They had a few months in France some years ago. Most painters seem to gravitate towards France at one time or another. But that’s all.”
“Have you ever heard her mention a policeman called Gill—PC Edwin Gill, number 1139?”
“I’ve never heard her mention any policemen. No, I tell a lie. She said the local pub in Cornwall stayed open till all hours when the bobby was there. But I don’t think that’d be your PC Gill.”
“No,” Banks said, “it wouldn’t. Did she ever attend political demonstrations—Greenham Common, the Aldermaston march, that kind of thing?”
“Pam’s never been very political. Wisely so, if you ask me. What’s the point? You can’t trust one lot more than the other. Is that all, Chief Inspector?”
“Is she there? Can I talk to her?”
There was a short pause and Banks heard muffled sounds from the other end of the line. Finally, he could hear the phone changing hands and another voice came on—husky and weary, as if doped or ill.
“Yes?”
Banks asked her the same questions he’d asked her sister, and the answers were the same. She spoke hesitantly, with long pauses between each sentence.
“Are the police involved in this custody battle?” Banks asked. “Uh, no,” she answered. “Just . . . you know . . . lawyers.” Naturally, Banks thought. “And you’ve never heard of PC Gill?”
“Never.”
“Has your sister visited Yorkshire recently?” Banks asked the question as soon as it came to him. After all, the sister might have got herself involved somehow.
“No. Here . . . looking after me. Can I go now? I’ve got to . . . I don’t know anything.”
“Yes,” Banks said. “That’s all. Thanks for your time.”
He hung up and made notes on the conversation while it was fresh in his mind. The one thing that struck him as odd was that neither of the women had asked about Julian, about how he was. Why, he wondered, did Rick’s wife want custody if she didn’t even care that much about the child? Spite? Revenge? Julian would probably be better off where he was.
Next he called the Hebden Bridge police and asked for PC Brooks.
“Sorry to bother you again, Constable,” he said. “I should probably have asked you all this before, but there’s been rather too much going on here. Can you tell me anything about Alison Cotton, the woman who was killed in the car accident?”
“I remember her all right, sir,” Brooks said. “It was my first accident and I . . . well . . . I, er . . .”
“I know what you mean. It happens to us all. Did you know her before the accident?”
“Oh, aye. She’d been here a few years, like, ever since the artsy types discovered us, you might say.”
“And Alison was artsy?”
“Aye. Helped organize the festival, poetry readings, that kind of thing. She ran the bookshop. I suppose you already know that.”
“What kind of a person was she?”
“She were a right spirited lass. Proper bonny, too. She wrote things. You know, poems, stories, stuff like that. I tried reading some in the local paper but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Give me ‘Miami Vice’ or ‘Dynasty’ any day.”
“Was she ever involved in political matters—marches, demos, things like that?”
“Well,” PC Brooks said, “we never had many things like that here.
A few, but nowt much. Mostly ‘Save the Whales’ and ‘Ban the Bomb.’ I don’t know as she was involved, though she did sometimes write bits for the paper about not killing animals for their fur and not making laboratory mice smoke five hundred fags a day. And about them women outside that missile base.”
“Greenham Common?”
“That’s the one. When it comes down to it, I dare say she was like the rest, though. If some bandwagon came along, they jumped on it.”
“Ever heard of a PC Gill, 1139, from Scarborough?”
“Only what I’ve read in the papers, sir. I hope you catch the bastard who did it.”
“So do I. What about a friend of Cotton’s called Elizabeth Dale? Heard of her?”
“Oh, aye. Liz Dale hung around with the Cotton crowd all right. Thick as thieves. I felt sorry for her, myself. I mean it’s like a sickness, isn’t it, when you get so you need something all the time.”
“Was she a registered addict?”
“Aye. She never really gave us any trouble. We just like to keep an eye on them, that’s all, make sure they’re not selling off half their prescriptions.”
“What kind of person is she?”
“Moody,” Brooks said. “She got off drugs, but she were never really right afterwards. One day she’d be up, the next down. Right bloody yo-yo. But there was a lass with strong political opinions.”
“Liz Dale was political?”
“Aye. For a while, at least. Till she got it out of her system. Like I said, bandwagon.”
“But she was keener than the rest?”
“I’d say so, yes. Now Seth, he was never much more than partly interested. Rather be slicing up a piece of wood. And Alison, like I said, well, she had a lot of energy and she had to put it somewhere, but she was more your private, artistic type. But Liz Dale, she was up to her neck in everything at one time.”
“Were Liz Dale and Alison Cotton especially close?”
“Like sisters.”
Banks thought of the complaint Dale had made against PC Gill.
From that, he already knew she had attended at least one demonstration and come across him. Perhaps there had been others, too. Alison Cotton could have been with her. Perhaps this was the link he was looking for. But so what? Alison was dead; Reginald Lee had run her over by accident. It still didn’t add up, unless everyone was lying and Liz Dale had been at Maggie’s Farm and at the Eastvale demonstration. Banks didn’t know her, but if she did have a history of drug abuse, there was a chance she might be unbalanced.
“Thanks a lot,” Banks said. “You’ve been a great help.”
“I have? Oh, well—”
“Just one more thing. Do you know where Liz Dale lives?”
“Sorry, I can’t help you there, sir. She’s been away from here a few years now. I’ve no idea at all.”
“Never mind. Thanks anyway.”
Banks broke the connection and walked over to the window. At the far side of the square, just outside the National Westminster bank, a rusty blue Mini had slammed into the back of a BMW, and the two drivers were arguing. Automatically, Banks phoned downstairs and asked Sergeant Rowe to send someone over. Then he lit a cigarette and started thinking.
He certainly needed to know more about Liz Dale. If he could prove that she had been in the area at the time of the demo, then he had someone else with a motive for wanting to harm Gill. The Dale woman could easily have visited the farm one day earlier that week and taken the knife—Mara said that no one paid it any mind as a rule. If nobody had seen her, perhaps she had walked in and taken it while everyone was out. But was she at the demo? And why use Seth’s knife? Did she have some reason other than revenge for wanting Gill dead? Obviously the best way to get the answer to that was to find Dale herself. Surely that couldn’t prove too difficult.
As PC Craig approached the two drivers in the market square, Banks walked over to his filing cabinet.
IV
Mara stood inside the porch with Rick and Zoe and waved goodbye to Dennis
Osmond and the others as they drove off. The sky was darkening in the west, and that early-evening glow she loved so much held the dale in its spell, spreading a blanket of silence over the landscape. Flocks of birds crossed the sky and lights flicked on in cottages down in Relton and over the valley in Lyndgarth.
“What do you think?” she asked Rick, as they went back inside. The evening was cool. She hugged herself, then pulled on a sweater and sat in the rocking chair.
Rick’s knees cracked as he knelt at the grate to start the fire. “I think it’ll work,” he said. “We’re bound to get the newspapers interested, maybe even TV. The police might try and discredit us, but people will get the message.”
Mara rolled a cigarette. “I’ll be glad when it’s all over,” she said. “The whole business seems to have brought us nothing but trouble.”
“Look on the bright side,” Rick said, turning to look at her. “It’s a blow against the police and their heavy-handed tactics. Even that woman from the Church for Peace group has started calling them pigs.”
“Still,” Mara said firmly, “it would have been better for all of us if none of it had ever happened.”
“Everything’s all right now,” Zoe said. “Paul’s back, we’re all together again.”
“I know, but . . .”
Mara couldn’t help feeling uneasy. True, Paul’s return had cheered them up no end, especially Seth, who had been moping around with a long face the whole time he’d been away. But it wasn’t the end. The police weren’t going to rest until they’d arrested someone for the murder, and they had their eyes on the farm. Paul might still end up in jail as an accessory, a serious charge, Mara now realized. She wondered if Banks was going to charge her, too. He wasn’t stupid; he must know she had warned Paul about Crocker’s finding the knife. Everything felt fragile. There was a chance she might lose it all, all the peace of mind and stability she had sought for so long. And the children, too. That didn’t bear thinking about.
“Cheer up.” Rick crawled over and tilted her chin up. “We’ll have a party to celebrate Paul’s release. Invite everyone we can think of and fill the place with music and laughter, eh?”
Mara smiled. “I hope you’re right.”
“Where is Paul, anyway?” Zoe asked.
A Necessary End Page 25