Strange Affair

by Peter Robinson

  “So you ended the evening on a sour note?”

  “He’d have got over it.”

  “If he hadn’t been killed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you fall out with Julian Harwood, by the way?”

  Lambert looked surprised. “You know about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was years ago. Storm in a teacup. Harwood insisted I’d cheated him out of some money in a land sale, that I knew the new motorway was going to run right by it.”

  “And did you?”

  Lambert did his best to look innocent and outraged, but it came out like a poor parody. “Me? Of course not. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

  “Of course not,” Banks echoed. “Is there anything more you can tell me?”

  “I’m afraid not. Except…”

  “What?”

  Lambert stood by the door and scratched his temple. “Don’t take this amiss,” he said. “Just a piece of friendly advice. Roy’s dead. I can’t change that. I don’t know anything about it, and I certainly don’t know who did it, but don’t you think you should think twice, take heed of what you’re getting into, and perhaps be a bit more careful lest you disturb a nest of vipers?”

  “Is that a warning, Mr. Lambert?”

  “Take it as you will.” Lambert looked at his watch. “Now I’m afraid I really must head for the office. I’ve got business to take care of.”

  Annie hardly had time to call at her cottage in Harkside and water the wilting potted plants before heading to Eastvale for the three-o’clock team meeting. It was another beautiful Dales day, a little cooler than it had been, with one or two fluffy white clouds scudding across the pale blue sky, but she didn’t have time to pause and enjoy any of it. Sometimes she wondered what the point of living in the country was, given her job and the hours she put in.

  They were all waiting in the boardroom: Gristhorpe, Hatchley, Winsome, Rickerd, Templeton and Stefan Nowak, crime scene coordinator. The long table was so highly polished you could see your reflection in it, and a whiteboard hung on the wall at one end of the room, surrounded by corkboards where Stefan had pinned the crime scene photographs. They made quite a contrast to the paintings of the wool barons on the other walls.

  After Annie had brought everyone up to speed on the Berger-Lennox Centre, Roy Banks, Carmen Petri and their possible connection with Jennifer Clewes’s murder, Gristhorpe handed the floor over to Stefan Nowak.

  Stefan stood by the boards and the photographs and cleared his throat. Not for the first time Annie wondered what sort of life Stefan led outside of work. He was one of the most charming and elegant men she had ever known, and his life was a complete mystery to her.

  “First of all,” said Stefan, “we have fingerprints from DCI Banks’s door that don’t match the builders’, we have tire tracks from his drive and…” Here he paused dramatically and lifted up a plastic bag. “We also have a cigarette end found near the beck on DCI Banks’s property, fortunately before the rain came. From this we have been able to get the saliva necessary for DNA.”

  “What about the tire tracks?” Annie asked.

  “They’re Michelins, of a type consistent with tires often used on a Mondeo,” said Stefan. “I’ve sent the necessary information to Essex for comparison with what’s left of the Mondeo that crashed outside Basildon. I’m still awaiting results.”

  “So,” Gristhorpe said, “you’ve got prints, tire tracks and DNA from DCI Banks’s cottage, and if and when we find a suspect, these will tie him to the murder of Jennifer Clewes and Roy Banks?”

  “Well,” said Stefan, “they’ll tie him to DCI Banks’s cottage.”

  “Exactly,” said Gristhorpe. “And no crime was committed there.”

  “That’s not strictly true, sir,” said Annie. “Someone definitely broke in.”

  Gristhorpe gave her a withering look and shook his head. “Not enough. Is there anything else?”

  “We’ve got Jennifer Clewes’s mobile records from the network,” Winsome said. “Not that they tell us a great deal. As far as I can gather, the calls are all to and from friends and family.”

  “What about the last call?” Annie asked. “The one Kate Nesbit remembered on Friday evening.”

  “Yes, I was coming to that,” said Winsome. “Jennifer received a phone call at ten forty-three P.M. on Friday, the eleventh of June, duration three minutes. The problem is that it’s an ‘unknown’ number. I’ve got the mobile company working on it, but they’re not offering a lot of hope.”

  “Thanks for trying,” said Annie.

  Gristhorpe looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ve got ACC McLaughlin and the press breathing down my neck. I appreciate your progress so far, but it’s not enough. We need results, and we need them fast. Annie, you’d better get back down to London tomorrow and keep pushing the Berger-Lennox connection. The rest of you keep at it up here. Winsome, get back to the mobile company and see if they can come up with a number for us. Get them to cross-check with Jennifer’s outgoing calls. That’s it for now.”

  When Gristhorpe left the room, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  “He’s in a bit of a grumpy mood this morning, isn’t he?” said Stefan to Annie as they all filed out a few moments later.

  “I think he’s had the chief constable as well as ACC McLaughlin on his case,” said Annie. “And it’s my guess that however enlightened he thinks he is, he still doesn’t like being given a bollocking by a woman.”

  Stefan smiled. “Ouch,” he said.

  “Ma’am, can I have a word?”

  It was DC Templeton. “Of course, Kev,” said Annie, waving good-bye to Stefan. “Let’s grab a coffee in the canteen.”

  Templeton pulled a face. “With all due respect, ma’am…”

  “I know,” said Annie. “It tastes like cat’s piss. You’re right. We’ll go to the Golden Grill.”

  They threaded their way through the crowd of tourists on Market Street and were lucky to find a free table. The sole waitress was rushed off her feet but she managed to bring them each a cup of coffee quickly enough. “What is it, Kev?” Annie asked.

  “It’s this Roger Cropley business,” Templeton said. “I haven’t bothered you with it much so far because, well, you’ve been down south and you’ve had lots of other things on your plate. I mean, it might be a bit tangential, but I really think we’re on to something here.”

  “What?”

  “The Claire Potter murder.”

  “I don’t know,” said Annie. “Seems like a bit of a coincidence, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” said Templeton, warming to the subject, “but if you really think about it, if Cropley has been preying on young women alone on the motorway on Friday nights, then the only coincidence is that he was at the Watford Gap services at the same time as Jennifer Clewes, and that’s exactly the kind of coincidence he’d always be hoping for. He trolls those places: Watford Gap, Leicester Forest, Newport Pagnell, Trowell. Claire Potter and Jennifer Clewes were exactly what he was looking for.”

  “I see your point,” said Annie. “But I mean it’s a coincidence that this time he picked on a girl who was already singled out by someone else to die.”

  “Okay, but strange things happen sometimes. It still doesn’t mean Cropley’s harmless.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that, Kev,” said Annie.

  “There was another woman, too: Paula Chandler. Someone drove her off the road late on a Friday night in February and tried to open her car door, only it was locked and she managed to get away.”

  “Did she get a good look at him?”

  “Just his hand.”

  Annie thought for a moment. “It still doesn’t mean Cropley’s the killer.”

  “Maybe there’s a way we can find out.”

  “Go on.”

  Templeton leaned forward, the excitement clear. “I met with DS Browne from Derby,” he went on, “and she ag
rees it’s worth a shot. I’ve talked with Cropley and his wife again since then and I’m still convinced there’s something there. Anyway…” He went on to tell Annie about the dandruff.

  “I must say,” Annie commented when he’d finished, “that’s very clever of you, Kev. I didn’t know they could get DNA from dandruff.”

  “They can,” said Templeton. “I checked it out with Stefan, and DS Browne confirmed it when she phoned to tell me she put a rush on it. They can also process DNA pretty quickly these days when they’ve a mind to.”

  “Leaving aside the problem of its being inadmissible,” Annie went on, “what do you expect to happen next?”

  “It doesn’t need to be admissible,” Templeton explained, as he had done to DS Browne. “We just need some concrete evidence that we’ve got the right guy, then we can pull out all the stops and nail him the right way. We get legitimate DNA samples. We interview him again. We get him to account for every minute of every Friday night he’s ever spent on the motorway. We get his coworkers and his employers to tell us what they know about him and his movements. We interview people at all the motorway garages and cafés again. All the late-night lorry drivers. Someone has to have seen something.”

  Templeton was looking at her with such keenness in his eyes that Annie felt it would be churlish to disappoint him, despite her misgivings. And if Derby CID was involved, too, at least he couldn’t go too far off the rails. Templeton was beginning to show all the signs of becoming a bit like Banks, Annie thought, and two of them she didn’t need. But he had at least talked to her, told her about his thoughts, which was more than Banks did most of the time.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “But I want you to work directly with Derby CID on this. If you talk to Cropley, I want this DS Browne or someone else from Derby with you. I don’t want you going off on your own with this, Kev. Understood?”

  Templeton nodded, still looking like the dog who’d got the bone. “Yes, ma’am. Don’t worry. It’ll be a solid case, by the book.”

  Annie smiled. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said. “But when it comes to it, I do expect a case that CPS will be willing to take to court.”

  “That’s a tall order.”

  Annie laughed. The Crown Prosecution Service was notoriously reluctant to take on anything they didn’t feel gave them a hundred percent chance of getting a conviction. “Do your best,” she said. “Let’s get back to the office.”

  They finished their coffees, paid and set off back across Market Street. Annie had no sooner got inside the station doorway than her mobile rang. She gestured for Templeton to go on ahead of her.

  “Detective Inspector Cabbot?” a familiar voice asked.

  “Yes, Dr. Lukas.”

  “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Not on the telephone. Can we meet?”

  Well, thought Annie, there went her evening at home relaxing in the tub with a good book. It had better be worth it. “I’m up north,” she said, glancing at her watch. “It’s twenty to four now. Depending on the trains, I should be able to get down there by about eight.”

  “That will be fine.”

  “At the house, then?”

  “No.” Dr. Lukas named a French restaurant in Covent Garden. “I will wait for you there,” she said, and hung up.

  After his talk with Gareth Lambert, Banks took the tube to Charing Cross and headed for the Albion Club. It didn’t open until late evening and the doors were locked. He tried knocking a few times, then he rattled them, but no one answered. A few passersby gave him disapproving glances, as if he were an alcoholic desperate for a drink. In the end he gave the door a hard kick, then walked to Trafalgar Square and wandered among the hordes of tourists for a while, trying to rid himself of the sense of frustration and anxiety that had been building up in him ever since he had seen Roy’s body laid out on the shingle bank.

  It was mid-afternoon, and Banks felt hungry despite the full English breakfast at Annie’s hotel that morning. He found an American-style burger joint near the top of Old Compton Street, just across from a body-piercing studio, and ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke.

  As he sat eating and watching the world go by outside, he thought about his talk with Gareth Lambert: the theatrics with the cigar, the joke about Carmen Electra, the reference to Roy’s being interested in arms deals again, the garbled warning as he was leaving—none of these things had been necessary, but Lambert hadn’t been able to resist. Innocence? Arrogance? It wasn’t always easy to tell them apart.

  But there was something else that left him feeling very unsatisfied indeed. Banks, perhaps more than anybody, felt that Roy might have been less than legal in his business dealings over the years, and as Corinne had pointed out, Banks had always been ready to think the worst of his brother. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but he thought he was right.

  After the talk with the Reverend Ian Hunt, though, not to mention after looking a bit deeper into Roy’s life, he had come to believe that Roy really had learned a lesson from the foolhardy arms deal he had been involved in once. What he had seen in New York on the eleventh of September, 2001, had shaken him to the core and had brought home to him the stark reality of terrorism. It was no longer a busful of strangers in Basra or Tel Aviv on a television screen, but people just like him going about their daily routine, some of whom he knew, dying right in front of his eyes.

  Banks was starting to think that perhaps Gareth Lambert had overplayed his hand. He didn’t believe that Roy wanted to get into arms dealing again and had been asking Lambert about old contacts. Unless he intended to seek retribution, which was unlikely at this late stage in the game. If Roy had any old scores he wanted to settle, he would have done so years ago in the white heat of his rage after 9/11. But he hadn’t. Which made Banks think that Lambert was lying. And there was only one clear explanation of that—to put Banks off the scent, divert him from the real business. More and more he was beginning to believe that that had something to do with the goings-on at the Berger-Lennox Centre, with Jennifer Clewes and Roy, with Dr. Lukas, with the mysterious Carmen Petri and the late girls. But how Lambert himself fit in, Banks still didn’t know. So what was the missing piece?

  He doubted that Lambert would give it up. He was far too shrewd for that. He had enjoyed toying with Banks, telling him he had seen Roy on Friday when he already knew from the newspapers that was the day Roy disappeared. But he had done that because he knew Banks had got a description from Malcolm Farrow and because he thought there was nothing in his actions that night to incriminate him. No doubt it was true that Roy had left the Albion Club between half past twelve and one o’clock, and that Roy hadn’t left till three. Banks would go back to the club and check later that evening.

  He finished his burger and took the tube back to South Kensington with a view to nosing around Roy’s files again to see if there was anything there relating to the Albion Club or any of the members’ names Lambert had given him. Perhaps he could phone some of them and see if they would verify Lambert’s story. He also wanted to get in touch with his parents and the Peterborough police again and make sure everything was all right.

  All was still quiet inside Roy’s house. Banks locked the door behind him, slipped the keys in his pocket and headed for the kitchen. When he got there, he was surprised to see a man sitting at the kitchen table. He was even more surprised when the man turned and pointed a gun at him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Sit down slowly,” the man said, “and keep your hands in sight.”

  Banks did as he was told.

  “Who are you?” the man asked.

  “I might well ask the same.”

  “I asked first. And I’ve got the gun.”

  “My name’s Alan Banks.”

  “Do you have any identification?”

  Banks put his hand slowly in his inside pocket and brought out his warrant card. He shoved it across the table to the man, who examined
it carefully, then pushed it back and slipped his gun inside a shoulder holster hidden by his jacket.

  “What the fuck was all that about?” said Banks, feeling a rush of anger as the adrenaline surged back.

  “I had to be sure,” said the man. “Dieter Ganz, Interpol.” He offered his own card, which Banks studied, then stuck out his hand. Banks didn’t feel like shaking it; he felt more like thumping him. Ganz shrugged. “I’m sorry,” he went on. “Detective Superintendent Burgess told me you might be here, but I had to make certain.” He didn’t have much of an accent, but it was there, if you listened, in his speech patterns and careful diction.

  “How did you get in?”

  “It wasn’t difficult,” said Ganz, glancing toward the back window. Banks saw that a circle of glass about the size of a man’s fist had been cut out of it just below the catch.

  “Well, I don’t know about you,” said Banks, “but after that little scare I could do with a drink.”

  “No, thank you,” said Ganz. “Nothing for me.”

  “Suit yourself.” Banks opened a bottle of Roy’s Côte de Nuits and poured himself a generous glass. His hand was still shaking. “So Burgess sent you, did he?”

  Ganz nodded. “He told me where you would be. I’m sorry it took so long but he had a little difficulty finding me. I’ve been out of the country. It seems that we have interests in common.”

  “First of all, you’d better tell me what yours are.”

  “At the moment, my interest is in people smuggling, more specifically, the smuggling of young women for the purposes of sexual exploitation.”

  Ganz looked undercover, Banks thought. He was young, early thirties at most. His blond hair was a bit too long and greasy, and he clearly hadn’t shaved for four or five days. The linen jacket he wore over his shirt was creased and stained, and his jeans needed a wash.

  “And what interests do we have in common?” Banks asked.

  Ganz took a piece of paper from his side pocket and unfolded it on the table. It was a copy of the photo Banks had given to Burgess. “You’ve been asking questions about who this man with Gareth Lambert is,” he said.