Strange Affair (14 page)

“She got over him.”

“And he her?”

“Not quite,” said Melanie with a frown. “Jenn told me that he’d pestered her once or twice, said he’d made a big mistake and asked her to give him another chance, that sort of thing. And he kept trying to phone her.”

“At work or at home?”

“Both.”

“When you say ‘pestered’ her, do you mean stalked her, threatened her, what?”

“She just said he pestered her.”

“Can you remember his name and address?”

“Not his address, no, but I’ve got it written down somewhere. Remind me before you go. I do remember he lives out Chalk Farm way. His name is Victor Parsons.”

“Was Jennifer involved with anyone else, after Victor?”

“I think so. Very recently.”

“Past few weeks?”

“Yes. Couple of months at the most. She was moving very cautiously. Anyway, I got the impression that she liked him a lot.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Sorry, she didn’t say. I mean she didn’t really say very much about it at all; she was being very cagey. It’s just that I’ve known
her for so long, you get to sort of recognize the signs, if you know what I mean.”

“Do you think he might be married?”

“Married? Good God, I hope not. I mean, Jenn wouldn’t go with a married man, not knowingly. I told you. She was serious about love. Believed in meeting Mr. Right and settling down together forever. She wasn’t casual about that sort of thing.”

Annie wondered if Kate Nesbit’s suspicions were at all justified or were simply the result of Jennifer’s natural reticence when it came to affairs of the heart. “Do you know where they met?”

“At work, I should think. She hardly goes anywhere else, except with me.”

“Look, I know this is probably a bit of a cliché,” Annie said, “but we do have to ask. Is there anyone you can think of who might have wanted to harm Jennifer? Has anyone at all ever made any threats against her?”

Melanie didn’t hesitate. “No,” she said, her eyes filling with tears again. “Jenn was a good soul, one of the truly good people.”

“You don’t know of any enemies she might have had?”

“She didn’t make enemies. If you ask me, this was one of those random attacks you hear about on the news, maybe a serial killer, someone who didn’t know her. Like that other girl, in the spring.”

“What about at work? Was everything all right there?”

“You’d have to ask them, but she never said anything to me about any problems. She liked her job.” She started to cry again. “I’m sorry. I just can’t get my head around it.”

Annie could think of no more questions anyway. She consoled Melanie as best she could and suggested she call a friend to come and stay. Melanie didn’t want to, said she’d be fine by
herself, and despite the tears Annie sensed that she was probably tougher than Kate Nesbit. Besides, her parents still lived in Shrewsbury, so they could hardly get down to London quickly. Annie left her card with her mobile number, telling Melanie she could ring at any time for any reason, and walked back to the tube wondering why someone so sensitive, serious and special as Jennifer Clewes had ended up a murder victim.

When Banks woke on Sunday morning to the sound of bird-song, his head was pounding, his mouth was dry, and he had the distinct memory of something very odd having happened during the night.

He stumbled to the bathroom, drank two glasses of water and took three Paracetamol tablets, then returned to the entertainment room, where he had slept on the sofa. He picked up Roy’s mobile and found that the image was still there, and that it made no more sense in the light of day than it had during the middle of the night. He found the incoming call on the call list. It was listed as “unknown.”

Banks examined the photo more closely. The foreground was out of focus, the figure blurred. Behind the slumped figure was what looked like a wall and Banks thought he could see the fuzzy outlines of letters written on it. There were no actual words he could read, but an expert might be able to glean something from it.

Was the man in the chair Roy? He could be, Banks supposed; the features weren’t clear, but the hair looked about right. If it were Roy, was this some sort of oblique way of informing Banks that someone had taken – had kidnapped – his brother? Would a ransom demand come soon?

The man in the photo could still be anyone, though, Banks decided in the end. Perhaps Roy himself had sent the photo. It could be a message of some kind, or a warning. On the other hand, it had been sent to
Roy’s
mobile, so was it intended for Roy, or did someone know that Banks had the phone? The latter thought didn’t do much to quell Banks’s fears for his brother. If someone already knew he was staying at Roy’s house and had Roy’s mobile, then he had better keep his eyes open and his wits about him.

Banks put the mobile aside and went back to the bathroom where he removed his rumpled clothes and climbed into Roy’s luxury Power Shower, turning it on full. The jets of hot water pummelled his body back into some semblance of humanity.

As he dried himself on a thick, soft towel, Banks realized that he had left his overnight bag in the boot of his car, which was parked outside. He didn’t want to dash out and fetch it right now, so he brushed his teeth with Roy’s electric toothbrush, which almost ripped his gums to shreds, and borrowed a clean short-sleeved shirt and socks from his brother’s wardrobe. He had to wear his own jeans because Roy’s were too long for him and too big around the waist.

After he had found Roy’s stash of coffee in one of the kitchen cupboards and made himself a decent pot, Banks took it with him upstairs and returned to the entertainment room and the mobile. The phone call and digital image should be traceable, Banks knew, given the police’s skill. You could also learn an awful lot from a mobile phone’s SIM card. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the resources at the moment. How important was it? he wondered.

Banks still couldn’t let go of the idea that his brother might have been involved in something illegal and that that was why
he’d vanished. Things had threatened to catch up with him and he’d had to run away fast and hide out. If that were the case and Banks brought in the local police, then he risked getting Roy into serious trouble. If something terrible came out – drugs or pornography, for example – and Roy went to jail, it could kill their parents.

On the other hand, there wasn’t much more he could do alone except work on the leads he already had: the names from Roy’s call list and mobile phone book, and from the files Corinne had printed for him. He knew what his duty was, what he would advise anyone else in his position to do, but still he hesitated. At least he had the laptop computer now, so he could spend a bit more time on the CD and USB drive, and there was one person he could turn to for help.

First he went into Roy’s office. There was another telephone message, he noticed. It must have come in while he was taking his shower. Again it was from Annie Cabbot, and she simply asked Roy to ring her as soon as possible. Banks had forgotten all about last night’s message. He still wasn’t sure that he wanted Annie involved – she would definitely want him to make Roy’s disappearance an official police matter – but he was curious enough to dial her mobile number and find out what she was after. He got no signal. Making a mental note to try again later, he picked up the telephone and rang Corinne, just to make sure. He breathed a sigh of relief when she said she was fine. She sounded sleepy. He apologized for waking her, said he’d be in touch and rang off.

Finally he dialled a number he had committed to memory. As requested he left a message and fifteen minutes later the phone rang. He snatched up the handset.

“Banks here.”

“What’s so urgent you have to disturb a hard-working copper on his only day off?” asked Detective Superintendent Richard “Dirty Dick” Burgess.

“I need to see you,” said Banks. “Urgently.”

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks weighed heavily on Superintendent Gristhorpe’s mind, and not only because if Banks were around, Gristhorpe might be able to spend a bit more time on his drystone wall rather than having to drive into Western Area Headquarters so early on a Sunday morning. No doubt there would be a crowd of reporters to deal with, as the issue of guns always touched a nerve. Despite having some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, enacted in the wake of the Dunblane massacre, the country seemed to be flooded with cheap illegal guns from Ireland and Eastern Europe, as well as with reactivated firearms.

As it was, he still had a little time in hand, so he took his mug of strong tea out to the back garden and rested it on his chair while he studied various stones from the pile to see which one fit best. The wall went nowhere and fenced nothing in, but for Gristhorpe it had become almost as necessary as breathing. He would never finish it – how could you finish something that went nowhere? – but if he ever did, he would pick it apart and start again. Wall-building was almost a lost art in the modern Dales, and while Gristhorpe had no pretensions to being an expert, of doing the work professionally, it was both his homage and his therapy.

As he weighed his options, Gristhorpe was pleasantly aware of the sun on his face and the light breeze that ruffled through his unruly thatch of hair, delicate as a woman’s fingers. He
thought of his wife, Mary, and her featherlight touch and realized it was over twelve years now since the cancer had taken her. He still missed her as he would miss a part of himself, and not a day went by when he didn’t think of her, remember some detail of her face, an expression, her gentle voice, her sense of humour, a certain gesture.

The air, he noticed, smelled of wild garlic, with a hint of tar from the hot road surface. Gristhorpe sipped some tea and decided upon a stone. The one he chose fit perfectly. Then he dragged his thoughts back to the matter in hand: Banks.

Over the years, Banks had been more than just a junior officer to Gristhorpe. He could remember his first impressions of an edgy, nervous, chain-smoking detective on the verge of career burnout, and he had wondered if he had made a mistake in approving the transfer. But Banks had made a journey back to some sort of equilibrium, aided in part by the Yorkshire countryside he had now adopted as his home.

In some ways, Gristhorpe knew that he had been a kind of mentor to the new Banks, not so much in terms of doing the job, but in human terms. Banks was a complex sort, and Gristhorpe wondered if he ever would find the peace and harmony he seemed to be looking for. After the divorce from Sandra, which Gristhorpe knew still hurt Banks deeply, and the messy relationship with Annie Cabbot, Banks seemed to have found a measure of happiness in his isolated cottage, but even that had come to an abrupt and violent end. Where next? Gristhorpe hadn’t a clue, and he didn’t think Banks had, either.

Gristhorpe drank more tea and looked for another stone. He wanted to know what Banks’s connection with the dead woman was before word of it leaked out. At the moment, it was simply a matter of trying to track Banks down through his family, but if that didn’t work, then the next step would have
to be an official one, and that could harm Banks’s career. It would mean using the media. They would have to put his photo in the newspapers, request anyone who thought they had seen him to call the police. And every copper in the country would be on the lookout for him, too. It wasn’t only that Gristhorpe wanted to know why the dead woman had Banks’s address in her back pocket – the wrong address – but that Annie said the cottage had been broken into, and the builders swore they had locked up as usual after their day’s work and left no valuable equipment behind.

Gristhorpe finished his tea and put the stone in place. Too big. He chucked it back on the pile and went indoors. Time to go to work.