Strange Affair

by Peter Robinson

  “Go on.”

  “Keep in touch, let me know what you find out.”

  “Okay. You, too.”

  “Stay away from Dr. Lukas. She’ll come around in her own time. You’ll only freak her out.”

  “No problem.”

  “And be careful, Alan. This isn’t a game.”

  “Believe me, I know that.” Banks bent forward, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and left. Annie watched him go, then she hurried back up to her room to pack. This morning, after checking in with Brooke, she was going back to Eastvale come hell or high water.

  You wouldn’t believe it. It was like a bloody three-ring circus here the last couple of days,” said Malcolm Farrow as he settled in his armchair with a stiff gin and tonic in his hand. Banks had declined the offer of gin as it was only ten o’clock in the morning, but he accepted the tonic water gratefully. Farrow had looked puzzled but poured it anyway. “As you can see, things have settled down a bit now.”

  Banks looked out of Farrow’s window at Roy’s house. The detectives must have finished their search and removed everything they thought pertinent to their investigation, because the place was unguarded.

  They would have gone through Roy’s stuff for any evidence related to the crime and also for information about his lifestyle, his habits and his associates that might give them a lead to follow. Banks knew what they would find because he had already made a thorough search himself and handed over everything to Brooke. Now the formalities were done with, the house would be turned over to Roy’s next of kin—his parents.

  “I can imagine what it was like,” said Banks. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t ring you straightaway, but I had to go take care of my parents and I didn’t have your number handy.”

  “That’s all right. I was really shocked to hear the news. It’s been all over the papers, and the television. We’ve had reporters around. They’ve gone now the police seem to have moved on.”

  “There’s nothing left for them here,” said Banks.

  “Anyway, it’s nice of you to remember me and drop by.”

  “No problem. Did the police want to talk to you?”

  “The police? Oh, yes. They were all over the street.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Just what I told you. It’s all I know.”

  “What about the reporters?”

  His face reddened. “Sent them packing. Bunch of scavengers.”

  “Have you thought any more about that photo I showed you?” asked Banks, slipping the envelope out of his briefcase.

  Farrow looked at it again through his reading glasses, which were clipped tightly to his bulbous, purple-veined nose. “Look, I’m not going to have to say anything in court, am I?”

  “This is just between you and me,” said Banks. As Farrow squinted at the photos. Banks sipped some tonic water. The fizziness made him burp and he could still taste the bacon and eggs he’d eaten for breakfast.

  “Well,” said Farrow, “it certainly could be him. The more I look, the more I see the resemblance. As I said, my eyesight’s not so good on detail, but there are streetlights and the man’s size and the gray hair look about right.” He passed the photo back to Banks. “A bit vague, I know, but it’s the best I can do.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Who is he, anyway? He’s surely not the one who…?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Banks. “If it really is him, he’s an old business partner of Roy’s.” Someone Roy would probably open the door to and accompany for a drink or whatever, which was the way it seemed to have happened. Someone he trusted.

  Banks thanked Farrow for his help, made his excuses and left.

  There were no signs of activity around Roy’s house on Wednesday morning, not even a police seal across the door. Banks used his key to open the door and walked inside. The only sound he could hear was the humming of the refrigerator. There was a deep silence at the core of the house, the silence of Roy’s absence, and it felt heavier now than it had when Banks first arrived.

  First he checked the kitchen. The laptop computer he had left on the table there was missing, and he assumed the police had taken it. There was nothing he could do about that right now, but he would have to let Brooke know that he wanted it back when they had finished with it.

  Next he went up to look at Roy’s office. Whoever had searched the house had made a neat and tidy job of it. Nothing looked out of place.

  Banks went into the entertainment room and flopped on the sofa. He thought about the CD he had found. Roy must have known that he was involved in something dodgy by Wednesday, when he buried the photos of Lambert and friend among the pornographic images. And perhaps he knew that the something dodgy—whether it was prostitution or illegal immigrants, or something else—was fast reaching critical mass. Did Roy know that his life was in danger? Banks doubted it. If Roy was used to skirting the edges of the law and mixing with bad company, as he seemed to be, then he was probably cocky enough to think there was nothing he couldn’t handle. But something had changed all that, and it had happened between Wednesday and Friday evening, or even a couple of days earlier, if Jennifer Clewes’s behavior was anything to go by.

  What had Roy’s movements been during those crucial days? Where had he been? Whom had he talked to? If Banks could get the answers to those questions, he thought, then he might be able to answer the riddle of Roy’s death. And Jennifer’s.

  He thought about what Annie had told him over breakfast, the doctor helping out prostitutes. Had Jennifer Clewes told Roy? Most likely she had. What had his reaction been? Had it anything to do with their deaths? But Banks failed to see how helping out a few unfortunate illegal immigrants could lead to murder. Unless, of course, the people who brought them in were involved and were beginning to feel threatened by something.

  Banks also hadn’t forgotten that Burgess had told him Gareth Lambert was a smuggler with a large network of underworld connections. Burgess had also said that Lambert knew the Balkan route like the back of his hand, and now Annie was telling Banks about Eastern European prostitutes using the Berger-Lennox Centre. At least a vague picture was beginning to form in his mind, but he still didn’t know Roy’s place in it, or why he had been killed.

  Banks thought back on his chat with Corinne the previous evening. He had found out a lot about his brother through talking to her. Roy loved the Goon Show and Monty Python; he did a hilarious Ministry of Silly Walks impersonation and quite a decent version of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch; New York was still his favorite city, Italy his favorite country; he had recently taken up digital photography and all the photos on his walls were his; he played golf and tennis regularly; he supported Arsenal (typical, Banks thought, who lumped Arsenal in the same category as Manchester United, the best teams money could buy); his favorite color was purple; his favorite food was wild mushroom risotto, his favorite wine Amarone; he loved opera and often took Corinne to Covent Garden (though she admitted that she never quite got opera); and they both enjoyed going to see Hollywood musicals and old foreign films with subtitles—Bergman, Visconti, Renoir, Fellini.

  Roy gave money to beggars in the street but complained when he thought he was being overcharged in shops and restaurants. He could be moody, and Corinne had to confess that she never quite knew what was going on in his mind. But she loved him, as she told Banks when her tears flowed for the second time, after the third glass of wine; no matter that she hadn’t known where she stood with him for weeks, no matter that he had left her largely alone to deal with the trauma of her abortion. She had still hoped, somehow, that he would tire of his new conquest and come back to her.

  There was only one family photograph in Roy’s entertainment room, and Banks walked over to look at it. It was taken on the promenade at Blackpool, he remembered, in August 1965, and you could see the Blackpool Tower in the background.

  There they stood, all four of them, parents on the inside and flanking them Roy, freckled then, his hair a lo
t fairer than it was when he got older, and Banks at fourteen looking moody and what he supposed passed for cool back then, in his black drain-pipe trousers and polo-neck Beatles jumper. He hadn’t really looked at the photo closely before, but when he did he realized that it must have been taken by Graham Marshall, who had accompanied the Banks family on that holiday only a month or so before he disappeared during his Sunday-morning paper round.

  This was the holiday when Banks had fallen for the beautiful Linda, who worked behind the counter at the local coffee bar. She was far too old for him, but he had fallen nonetheless. Then he and Graham had picked up a couple of girls at the Pleasure Beach, Tina and Sharon, and taken them under the pier for a bit of hanky-panky. He didn’t remember having the photograph taken, but that was no surprise. He hardly remembered Roy’s being on that holiday, either. What fourteen-year-old would waste his time hanging around with his nine-year-old brother?

  Graham Marshall was dead, another murder victim, and now Roy. Banks looked at his father in an old gray V-necked pullover, shirtsleeves rolled up, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, hair swept back with Brylcreem. Then he looked at his mother, hardly a dolly bird, but surprisingly young and pretty, with a full-bodied perm and a summer dress showing off her trim waist, smiling into the camera. What would they find when they explored her insides next week? Banks wondered. Would she survive? And his father, after all this trauma? Banks was beginning to feel as if everyone he came into contact with was cursed, that all his companions became hostages to death, like the wraiths that haunted “Strange Affair.”

  Then he told himself to stop being so maudlin. He had solved Graham Marshall’s murder over thirty-five years after it had been committed, his mother would survive the operation, and his father’s heart would go on beating for a long time yet. Roy was dead and Banks would find out who killed him. And that was that.

  As Banks was getting ready to head out to try Gareth Lambert again, his mobile rang.

  “Alan, it’s Annie.”

  “Thought you were on your way home.”

  “So did I, but something’s come up.”

  Banks gripped the phone tighter. “What?”

  “Technical support have worked out where the digital photo on your brother’s mobile was taken.”

  “How on earth did they manage that?”

  “From the list of abandoned factories,” Annie said. “There were some letters visible on a wall in the background: NGS and IFE. One of the factories listed was Midgeley’s Castings, and one of the older detectives on the team remembered he used to pass by the place on his way to school and they had a sign that read ‘Midgeley’s Castings: Cast for Life.’ The place shut down in 1989 and nobody’s done anything with it since.”

  “Where is it?”

  “By the river down Battersea way. I’m sorry to be so brutal, Alan, but the tide experts also agree that it’s very likely the area where your brother’s body was dumped in the river, so it’s looking more and more as if it was Roy in foreground of the picture. We’re heading out there now. Want to come?”

  “You know I do. What does Brooke have to say?”

  “He’s okay with it. Meet us there?”

  “Fine.”

  Annie gave him an address and directions and Banks hurried out to his car.

  DS Browne?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is DC Templeton from Eastvale. How are things down your way?”

  “Fine, thanks. Anything new?”

  “Maybe,” said Templeton, fingering the plastic bag on the desk in front of him. “I went to talk to Roger Cropley’s wife and found him at home. Says he’s got a summer cold but I didn’t notice any sniffles. Anyway, I think I rattled him a bit more. He seemed a bit nervous when I told him that Paula Chandler, the woman who got away, thought she might be able to recognize her attacker.”

  “But that’s not true,” Susan said.

  “Cropley doesn’t know that. And I think his wife might know a bit more than she’s letting on, too. Anyway, I’ve got an idea. Did your SOCOs do a thorough trace-evidence search of the victim’s car?”

  “I’m sure they did,” said Susan. “But there was no evidence that the killer was ever in the car. He clearly dragged her out and into the bushes.”

  “But he’d have to lean in to apply the chloroform.”

  “True. What are you getting at?”

  “You’ve still got all the collected samples, I assume? Hair? Skin?”

  “Of course.”

  “And the car?”

  “That, too. Look, what’s going on?”

  “Can you check if they found any dandruff on the seat back?”

  “Dandruff?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll check,” said Susan. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’ve been on the Web, and it all sounds a bit complicated, but as far as I can gather, you can get DNA from dandruff. I mean it is just skin, isn’t it?”

  “It won’t do us much good,” said Susan, “unless we have a sample for comparison.”

  “Er…well, as a matter of fact, we might have.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve got a sample of Cropley’s dandruff. Can I send it down to you?”

  “I trust you didn’t ask Mr. Cropley for this?”

  Templeton laughed. “No. Believe me, he gave it quite freely, though.”

  “That’s not the point,” Susan said. “I’m sure you know as well as I do that you have to get the suspect’s written permission even for a non-intimate sample, unless you’ve detained him for a serious offense and the super gives permission to take one.”

  “I know my PACE regulations,” said Templeton. “What I’m saying is that this could confirm my suspicions. If you knew it was him, if we knew it was him, then it would make a difference and we could start to build a real case. He doesn’t have to know about the previous sample. Nobody does except you and me. Right now we’ve got no real grounds to arrest him and demand a sample, but if the sample he gave me matches any of the dandruff found in the car, then we’d know where to look and you can be damn sure we’d come up with something to arrest him for. After that…well, then we’d get an official sample, of course.”

  “What if it’s not him?”

  “Then he’s off the hook.”

  “But there’d be records, paperwork relating to the first test. These things are expensive.”

  “I know that, but so what? It needn’t come out. Surely you must know someone at the lab with a bit of discretion? How is anybody going to know?”

  “A good defense lawyer would use it as ammunition against our case.”

  “Only if he found out. Besides, it wouldn’t matter. By that point we’d have officially matching DNA, which we’d have no trouble getting admitted, all by the book. You can’t argue with that. Christ, I’ll even pay for the test myself if that’s your problem.”

  “That’s not the problem. And I doubt you could afford it, anyway. The point is that if it does turn out to be Cropley, the real evidence could be thrown out because of what you’re asking. It’s iffy. No, I don’t like this at all.”

  Templetion sighed. He hadn’t realized what a stickler DS Browne was. “Look,” he said, “do you want this guy or not? Maybe it’ll rule him out. I don’t know. But we should at least keep an eye on him. If I’m right—and the DNA would prove that one way or another—he’s done it before and he’ll do it again. What do you think? Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Templeton felt himself tense during the silence that followed.

  Finally, Susan Browne said, “Send it down. I’ll talk to my SIO, see what I can do. I’m not promising anything, though.”

  “Great,” said Templeton. “It’s already on the way.”

  Banks felt more trepidation than he could ever have imagined as he walked with Brooke and Annie over the weeds and stony ground toward the dirty brick factory, its ugly facade covered in Day-Glo graffiti. Was he now going
to see the exact spot where his brother had been shot and killed? Little Roy, whom he’d saved from a bully and scarred with a toy sword. He gritted his teeth and felt his neck and arm muscles tense up.

  The doors looked forbidding, but they were easily opened, and the three were soon crossing the vast factory floor, footsteps echoing. There was something about abandoned factories, with the gaping holes in their roofs, rusted old machines, drums, pallets and weeds growing through cracks in the walls and floor, that always disturbed Banks. He thought it had something to do with a dream that had scared him when he was young, but he couldn’t remember the details. He also thought it had something to do with the ball-bearing factory across the road from his parents’ house, though it had been in operation during his time there and he had no unpleasant experiences associated with it. There had always been derelict houses, workshops and factories, though, and he had explored most of them with his friends, tracking down imaginary monsters. Whatever the reason, places like that still gave him the shivers, and this one was no exception.

  “You do take me to the nicest places, Dave,” said Annie. “This is almost as cheerful as that street in Bow.”

  “At least it’s not raining today,” Brooke said.

  A rat scuttled out from under a rusted sheet of metal and practically ran over Annie’s feet on its way out. She pulled a face but made no sound. Sunlight lanced through missing sections of roof, illuminating the dust motes the three of them kicked up as they walked. The large windows behind their protective grilles were all broken, and shattered glass was strewn all over the floor, sparkling in the rays of light. Here and there were oily puddles and damp patches from the previous night’s rain.

  At the center of the factory floor, almost hidden by rusty machines, Banks saw a wooden chair. On the floor beside it lay snakelike lengths of cord.

  “Better stand back,” said Brooke as they approached it. “The SOCOs will be here soon and they won’t appreciate it if we trample all over their scene.”

  Banks stood and looked. He thought he could see spots of blood on the cord and splatters on the ground near the chair. For a moment he pictured Roy tied there, felt his terror as he knew he was going to die in this filthy place, then his policeman’s instinct kicked in and he tried to interpret what he was seeing.