“Elizabeth’s been here for the past month. She can’t be involved.”
“I’m not saying she is. Will you just let me talk to her?”
The doctor frowned. Banks could see her brain working fast behind her eyes. “All right,” she said finally. “But treat her gently. She’s very fragile. And I insist on being present.”
“I’d rather talk to her alone.” The last thing Banks wanted was this woman watching over the conversation like a lawyer.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“How about if you remained within calling distance? Say, the other end of this room?” The room was certainly large enough to accommodate more than one conversation.
The doctor smiled out of the side of her mouth. “A compromise? All right. Stay here while I fetch Elizabeth. Take a seat.”
But Banks felt restless after being in the car. Instead, he walked around the room looking at the paintings, almost all of which illustrated some intense level of terror: mad eyes staring through a letter-box; a naked man being dragged away from a woman, his features creased in a desperate plea; a forest in which every carefully painted leaf looked like a needle of fire. They sent shivers up his spine. Noticing plenty of pedestal ashtrays around, he lit up. It was warm in the room, so he took off his car-coat and laid it on a chair.
About five minutes later, the doctor returned with another 300
woman. “This is Elizabeth Dale,” she said, introducing them formally, then walked off to the far end of the room, where she sat facing Banks and pretended to read a magazine. Liz took a chair on his left, angled so they could face one another comfortably. The chairs were well-padded, with strong armrests.
“I saw you looking at the paintings,” Elizabeth said. “Quite something, aren’t they?” She had a melodic, hypnotic voice. Banks could easily imagine its persuasive powers. He had a feeling, however, that it would probably become tiresome after a while: whining and wheedling rather than beautiful and soft.
Elizabeth Dale smoothed her long powder-blue skirt over her knees. Her slight frame was lost inside a baggy mauve sweater with two broad white hoops around the middle. If she was Seth’s contemporary, that made her about forty, but her gaunt, waxy face was lined like that of a much older woman, and her black hair, hacked, rather than cut, short was liberally streaked with grey. It was a face that screamed of suffering; eyes that had looked deep inside and seen the horror there. Yet her voice was beautiful. So gentle, so soothing, like a breeze through woods in spring.
“They’re very powerful,” Banks said, feeling his words pathetically inadequate in describing the paintings.
“People see those things here,” Elizabeth said. “Do you know what this place used to be?”
“No.”
“It was a hospital, a fever-hospital, during the typhoid epidemics in the last century. I can hear the patients screaming every night.”
“You mean the place is haunted?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “Maybe it’s me who’s haunted. People go crazy here sometimes. Break windows and try to cut themselves with broken glass. I can hear the typhoid victims screaming every night as they’re burning up and snapping bones in convulsions. I can hear the bones snap.” She clapped her hands. “Crack.
Just like that.”
Then she put her hand over her mouth and laughed.
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Banks noticed the first and second fingers of her right hand were stained yellow with nicotine. She rummaged inside her sweater and pulled out a packet of Embassy Regal and a tarnished silver lighter. Banks took out a cigarette of his own, and she leaned forward to give him a light. The flame was high and he caught a whiff of petrol fumes as he inhaled.
“You know,” Elizabeth went on, “for all that-the ghosts, the screaming, the cold-I’d rather be here than … than out there.” She nodded her head towards the door. “That’s where the real horror is, Mr Banks, out there.”
“I take it you don’t keep up with the world, then. No newspapers, no television?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No. There is a television here, next door. But I don’t watch it. I read books. Old books. Charles Dickens, that’s who I’m reading now. There’s opium-taking in Edwin Drood, did you know that?”
Banks nodded. He had been through a Dickens phase some years ago.
“Have you come about the complaint?” Elizabeth asked.
“What complaint?”
“It was years ago. I made a complaint about a policeman for hitting people with his truncheon at a demonstration. I don’t know what became of it. I never heard a thing. I was different then; things seemed more worthwhile fighting for. Now I just let them go their way. They’ll blow it up, Mr Banks. Oh, there’s no doubt about it, they’ll blow us all up. Or is it drugs you want to talk about?”
“It’s partly about the complaint, yes. I wanted to talk to you about Seth Cotton. Seth and Alison.”
“Good old Seth. Poor old Seth. I don’t want to talk about Seth. I don’t have to talk to you, do I?”
“Why don’t you want to talk about him?”
“Because I don’t. Seth’s private. I won’t tell you anything he wouldn’t, so it’s no good asking.”
Banks leaned forward. “Elizabeth,” he said gently, “Seth’s dead. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
At first he thought she wasn’t going to react at all. A little sigh escaped her, nothing more than a gust of wind against a 302
dark window. “Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it?” she said, her voice softer, weaker. “Peace at last.” Then she closed her eyes, and her face assumed such a distant, holy expression that Banks didn’t dare break the silence. It would have been blasphemy. When she opened her eyes again, they were clear. “My little prayer,” she said.
“What did you mean, poor Seth?”
“He was such a serious man, and he had to suffer so much pain. How did he die, Mr Banks? Was it peaceful?”
“Yes,” Banks lied.
Elizabeth nodded.
“The problem is,” Banks said, “that nobody knew very much about him, about his feelings or his past. You were quite close to Seth and Alison, weren’t you?”
“I was, yes.”
“Is there anything you can tell me about him, about his past, that might help me understand him better. I know he was upset about Alison’s accident-“
“Accident?”
“Yes. You must know, surely? The car-“
“Alison’s death wasn’t an accident, Mr Banks. She was murdered.”
“Murdered?”
“Oh yes. It was murder all right. I told Seth. I made him believe me.”
“When?”
“I figured it out. I used to be a nurse, you know.”
“I know. What did you figure out?”
“Are you sure Seth’s dead?”
Banks nodded.
She eyed him suspiciously, then smiled. “I suppose I can tell you, then. Are you sitting comfortably? That’s what they say before the story on ‘Children’s Hour,’
you know. I used to listen to that when I was young. It’s funny how things stick in your memory, isn’t it? But so much doesn’t. Why is that, do you think? Isn’t the mind peculiar? Do you remember Uncle Mac and ‘Children’s Favourites’?
‘Sparky and the Magic Piano’? Petula Clark singing ‘Little Green Man’?”
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“I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” Banks said. “But I’m sitting comfortably.”
Elizabeth smiled. “Good. Then I’ll begin.”
And she launched into one of the saddest and strangest stories that Banks had ever heard.
II
What Liz Dale told him confirmed what he had been beginning to suspect. His theories were no longer mutually exclusive, but he felt none of his usual elation on solving this case.
He drove back to Eastvale slowly, taking the longest, most meandering route west through the gritstone country away from the large towns and cities. There w
as no hurry. On the way, he listened to scratchy recordings of the old bluesmen: gamblers, murderers, ministers, alcoholics, drug addicts singing songs about poverty, sex, the devil and bad luck. And the signs flashed by: Mytholmroyd, Todmorden, Cornholme. In Lancashire now, he skirted the Burnley area on a series of minor roads that led by the Forest of Trawden, then he was soon back in Craven country around Skipton, where the grass was lush green with limestone-rich soils.
He stopped in Grassington and had a pub lunch, then cut across Greenhow Hill by Pateley Bridge and got back to Eastvale via Ripon.
Burgess was waiting in his office. “You owe me a fiver,” he said. “A couple of glasses of Mumm’s and she was all over me.”
“There’s no accounting for taste,” Banks said.
“You’ll have to take my word for it. I’m not crass, I don’t go in for stealing knickers as a trophy.”
Banks nodded towards the superintendent’s swollen, purplish cheek. “I see you’ve got a trophy of a kind.”
“That bloody husband of hers. Mistrustful swine.” He fingered the bruise. “But that was later. He’s lucky I didn’t pull him in for assaulting a police officer.
Still, I suppose he deserved a swing at me, so I let him. All nice and quiet.”
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“Very magnanimous of you.” Banks pulled a five-pound note from his wallet and dropped it on the desk.
“What’s wrong with you today, Banks? Sore loser?” Burgess picked up the money and held it out. “Fuck it, you don’t have to pay if you’re that hard up.”
Banks sat down and lit a cigarette. “Ever heard of a fellow called Barney Merritt?” he asked.
“No. Should I?”
“He’s an old friend of mine, still on the Met. He’s heard of you. He’s also heard of DC Cranby. Keith J. Cranby.”
“So?” The muscles around Burgess’s jaw tightened and his eyes seemed to turn brighter and sharper.
Banks tapped a folder on his desk. “Cranby and a mate of his-possible DC
Stickley-rented a blue Escort in York a couple of days ago. They drove up to Eastvale and checked into the Castle Hotel-the same place as you. I’m surprised you didn’t pass each other in the lobby, it’s not that big a place.”
“Do you realize what you’re saying? Maybe you should reconsider and stop while the going’s good.”
Banks shook his head and went on.
“The other day they broke into Dennis Osmond’s flat. They didn’t find what they were looking for, but they took one of his political books to put the wind up him. He thought he had every security force in the world after him. Yesterday evening they broke into Tim and Abha’s apartment and took away a number of folders. That was after I told you where the information they’d collected on the demo was kept.”
Burgess tapped a ruler on the desk. “You have proof of all this, I suppose?”
“If I need it, yes.”
“What on earth made you think of such a thing?”
“I know your methods. And when I mentioned the Osmond breakin you didn’t seem surprised. You didn’t even seem to care very much. That was odd, because my first thought was that it might have had a bearing on the Gill case. But, of course, you already knew all about it.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“I just don’t understand you,” Banks said. “What the 305
bloody hell did you hope to achieve? You used the same vigilante tactics they did in Manchester after the Leon Brittan demo.”
“They worked, though, didn’t they?”
“If you call hounding a couple of students out of the country and drawing national attention to the worst elements of policing good, then yes, they worked.”
“Don’t be so bloody naive, Banks. These people are all connected.”
“You’re paranoid, do you know that? What do you think they are? Terrorists?”
“They’re connected. Union leaders, Bolshy students, banthebombers. They’re all connected. You can call them misguided idealists if you want, but to me they’re a bloody menace.”
“To who? To what?”
Burgess leaned forward and gripped the desk. “To the peace and stability of the nation, that’s what. Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“I’m not on anyone’s side. I’ve been investigating a murder, remember? A policeman was killed. He wasn’t a very good one, but I don’t think he deserved to end up dead in the street. And what do I find? You bring your personal bloody goon squad from London and they start breaking and entering.”
“There’s no point arguing ethics with you, Banks-“
“I know-because you don’t have a leg to stand on.”
“But let me remind you that I’m in charge of this case.”
“That still doesn’t give you the right to do what you did. Can’t you bloody understand? You with all your talk about police image. This vigilante stuff only makes us end up looking like the bad guys, and bloody stupid ones at that.”
Burgess sat back and lit a cigar. “Only if people find out. Which brings us back to my question. What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. But you’re going to make sure those files are returned and that the people involved are left alone from now on.”
“Am I? What makes you so sure?”
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“Because if you don’t, I’ll pass on what I know to Superintendent Gristhorpe.
The ACC respects his opinion.”
Burgess laughed. “You’re not very well-connected, you know. I don’t think that’ll do much good.”
“There’s always the press, too. They’d love a juicy story like this. Dennis Osmond has a right to know what was done to him, too. Whatever you think, I don’t believe it would do your future promotion prospects much good.”
Burgess tapped his cigar on the rim of the ashtray. “You’re so bloody pure of heart, aren’t you, Banks? A real crusader. Better than the rest of us.”
“Don’t come that. You were out of line and you know it. You just thought you could get away with it.”
“I still can.”
Banks shook his head.
“You’re forgetting that I’m your superior officer. I can order you to hand over whatever evidence you’ve got.”
“Balls,” said Banks. “Why don’t you send Cranby and Stickley in to steal it?”
“Look,” Burgess said, reddening with anger, “you don’t want to cross me. I can be a very nasty enemy. Do you really think anyone’s going to take any notice of your accusations? What do you think they’ll do? Kick me off the force? Dream on.”
“I don’t really care what they do to you. All I know is that the press will make a field-day of it.”
“You’d be sawing off the branch you’re sitting on. Think about where your loyalty lies. We do a difficult enough job as it is without taking an opportunity to set everyone against us. Have you considered that? What effect it would have on you lot up here if it did get out? I don’t have to live here, thank God, but you do.”
“Damn right I do,” said Banks. “And that’s the point. You can come here and make a bloody mess then bugger off back to London. I have to live and work with these people. And I like it. It took me long enough to get accepted as far as I have been, and you come along and set back relations by years. Take it or leave it.
Give back the files, call off your goons, and it’s forgotten, another unsolved breakin.”
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“Oh, what a bleeding hero we are! And what if I put on a bit more pressure, got a couple of higher-ups to order you to hand over your evidence? What then, big man?”
“I’ve already told you,” Banks said. “It’s not me you need to worry about, it’s the press, Osmond and the students.”
“I can handle them.”
“It’s up to you.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Take your pick.”
“Who’s going to believe a couple of loony lefties anyway? And everyone knows the press is biased.”
Banks shrugged. “Maybe nobody. We’ll see.”
Burgess jerked to his feet. “I won’t forget this, Banks,” he snarled. “When I make my report on this investigation-” “It’s over,” Banks said wearily.
“What is?”
“The investigation.” Banks told him briefly about his conversation with Elizabeth Dale.
“So what happens now?”
“Nothing. Except maybe you piss off back home.”
“You’re not going to go blabbing the whole bloody story to the press?”
“No point, no. But I think Mara and the others have a right to know.”
“Yes, you would.” Burgess strode over to the door. “And don’t think you’ve won, because you haven’t. You won’t get out of it as easily as all that.”
And he left, the threat hanging in the air.
Banks stretched out his hands in front of him and noticed they were shaking.
Even though the office was cool, his neck felt sweaty under the collar. His legs were weak, too, as he found out when he grabbed another cigarette and walked over to the window. It wasn’t every day you got the chance to be high-handed with a senior officer, especially a whiz-kid like Dirty Dick Burgess. And it was the first time Banks had ever seen him ruffled.
Maybe he had made a dangerous enemy for life. Perhaps Burgess had even been right and he was overplaying the crusader role. After all, he played it a bit close to the edge
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himself sometimes. But to hell with it, he thought. It wasn’t worth dwelling on.
He picked up his coat, pocketed his cigarettes and set off for the car-park.
Ill
The rain had stopped and the afternoon sun was charming wraiths of mist from the river-meadows and valleysides. Banks’s Cortina crackled up the track and pulled up outside the farmhouse.
Mara answered the door on his second knock and let him in.
“I suppose you want to sit down?” she asked.
“It might take a while.” Banks made himself comfortable in the rocking chair.
The children sat at the table colouring, and Paul slouched on the beanbag cushions reading a science-fiction book.
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