Unti Peter Robinson #22 (9 page)

“It's possible.”

“Have another word with this Terry Gilchrist, Winsome. Could he be involved? After all, he is ex-­army, and he did find the bloodstains.”

“His dog did,” Winsome said. “I don't really see why he'd follow it under a chain-­link fence in his condition, with the weather the way it was, and then phone us if he was responsible for it in the first place. Do you, sir?”

“Perhaps not, when you put it like that, but we have to consider the possibility.”

“Without Gilchrist and his dog, the crime scene could have gone unobserved for days, or weeks.”

“True,” Banks agreed. “Unless one of the lorry drivers noticed.”

“But if they had something to do with the blood,” Winsome argued, “then they'd hardly report it, would they, sir?”

“But Gilchrist does have a military background, doesn't he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So he's no doubt conversant with ways of killing?”

“I suppose so.”

“And military operations and criminal operations have several features in common, including a certain level of organization. He also knows the area well. It shouldn't be too hard to track down his military records. You say he was injured in action?”

“Yes, sir. In Afghanistan. His legs.”

“But he's still mobile?”

“I'd say he's pretty nifty on his pins, sir, yes.”

Banks smiled. “ ‘Nifty on his pins.' I like that.” He turned to DC Masterson. “Gerry, can you see about tracking down Terry Gilchrist's military record? You know the sort of thing, any suspicions he was up to anything illegal while he was serving, black market activities, looting, whatever. And while you're at it, have a look into John Beddoes's finances. As Annie said, we can't rule out insurance fraud.”

“Yes, sir,” said Gerry, scribbling fast on her pad.

“And we'll need to know exactly who owns the abandoned airfield.”

“Consider it done, sir.”

“Excellent. Stefan, do you have anything for us? Tire tracks?”

“We're still working the scene,” Nowak said, “but there's not much chance of tire tracks on the concrete. From the mess they trailed in, though, I'd say there could have been two or three vehicles at the scene, but I can't say when or what they were.”

“Fingerprints?”

“There's no decent surface to get fingerprints from. Not the concrete floor and not the corrugated metal walls. The lock and the wire mesh gate are clean. We're still dusting around the general area, but don't expect too much with all the rain we've had. We might get a few partials or smudges, if we're lucky. We're also going to do a thorough luminal search. If blood was spilled there recently, there's always a chance that the hangar was used before as a place of execution. There might be traces of previous crimes, and they might lead to DNA.”

“Good work, Stefan. Anything new on the trace evidence, Jazz?”

“You'll have your DNA analysis sometime tomorrow, as promised,” Jazz Singh said. “And I want you to know it's got me in trouble with Harrogate. They thought they had priority. In the meantime, all I can tell you is that the blood type of the sample is A positive. Not very exciting news, as it's the same as about thirty-­five percent of the UK population. But if you look on the bright side, it rules out sixty-­five percent. I've sent the brain matter and bone fragments for outside analysis. We don't have the facilities for that. I'm not sure what that'll tell us, or how long it will take, but the odds are that it'll be very expensive and you'll probably have solved the case by then.” She smiled sweetly and rested her hands on the table. Annie made a note of the blood type.

Banks glanced toward PC Trevor. “Anything from the house-­to-­house?”

“Nothing, sir,” said a sulky PC Trevor. “Len and Dave are still out knocking on doors in Drewick.”

Banks turned to Wilson. “Doug, I noticed the hangar's very close to the railway lines. Do you think you can check with East Coast and any other companies who use it about whether anyone saw anything there recently?”

Wilson nodded and made a note. “I'll see if I can get a request on the news as well.”

Banks let the silence stretch for a moment, then addressed the room at large. “How do you get from the airfield to the A1?” he asked. “Is the only way the way Gerry and I came? From what I could see, all there was around there were bumpy overgrown tracks until you got to the village.”

“You'd have to get back to the Thirsk road, a mile or so beyond Drewick,” said Doug Wilson. “From there you could go north to Northallerton or south to Thirsk. Either way, it's a few miles.”

“There is another way,” said Winsome. “If you continue south on that track that runs by the airfield gates, you go through the woods parallel to the railway lines, and when you get to a village called Hallerby, you can turn right on a B road leading to the A1. That cuts off Thirsk and saves you a bit of time. There's also a lot less traffic and only the one village to drive through.”

“Is there anything in this Hallerby?”

“Usual stuff, sir,” said Winsome. “Few houses, ­couple of shops, village hall, chapel, a pub.”

“And you'd have to pass through there either way if you were taking that shortcut to or from the A1?”

Winsome nodded. “It's where the bumpy lane starts and heads north. The B road from the A1 continues to Thirsk.”

“Maybe you could pay a visit to this Hallerby tomorrow, Winsome, and see if anyone saw lorries, or any other traffic, heading to or from the A1 via that road this weekend. Someone must have seen or heard something coming out of the woods. It might have appeared odd or rare enough to remember.”

“Sir,” said Winsome.

“Is that all?” Banks asked, glancing around the room.

“There is one more thing, sir,” Doug Wilson said.

“Doug?”

“When DI Cabbot and I went to talk to Morgan Spencer, he wasn't home, like DI Cabbot said. His neighbor hasn't seen him all weekend. We didn't have a search warrant, and he's ex-­job, so he wouldn't have us taking a butcher's. We'll be needing a search warrant.”

Banks looked toward AC Gervaise.

“Get back there tomorrow morning and have a good look around,” she said. “Talk to his other neighbors on the site, too. I'll see to the warrant first thing. But make sure you ask the site manager beforehand and explain your predicament. If he doesn't have a key, then you'll have to break in, but only if, and only after, you have the warrant in your hand. OK?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Gervaise looked at her watch and stood up. “Why don't you all go home now and get some rest? Tomorrow looks like a busy day. We've got a stolen tractor, two young men we'd like to find and talk to and the makings of a suspicious death at an abandoned airfield. For the moment these are separate cases, and I'll see that actions are issued accordingly. But for crying out loud, keep open minds, all of you.” She pointed toward the timeline on the whiteboard. “You know how I feel about coincidences. If you come across one shred of evidence you think links the cases, then report it to me immediately, and we'll change our strategy. Clear?”

Annie and the rest nodded, then they made their way out of the boardroom. After one or two brief conversations in the corridor, the team dispersed. At last, Annie thought, as she picked up her coat from the squad room, it was time to go home. Now she could enjoy what she had been wanting all day: that hot bath and stack of trashy magazines.

BANKS GOT
home to a cold house at about eight o'clock. He turned up the thermostat, promising himself yet again that if he ever got a pay increase, the first thing he would buy was a better heating system. He dumped his bag and satchel on the floor, hung up his coat and picked up the post from the inside mat. It consisted mostly of bills, subscription renewal forms and a box set of Janet Baker CDs that had only just fit through the letter box.

There was also a postcard from his parents, who were cruising the Amazon: a picture of the Manaus opera house. Banks turned it over and read his mother's small neat handwriting. His father didn't like to write, Banks knew, because he was self-­conscious about his spelling and grammar. His mother, with her typical economy, had crammed as many words in the small space as she possibly could. “We thought you might like this, being an opera fan and all. It's very hot and muggy here, so bad some days your poor dad can hardly breathe. The food is good on the ship. Some of the other passengers are really rude and stuck-­up but we've made friends with a ­couple from York and some nice ­people from near Stratford. We went for a boat ride around some islands yesterday and saw a sloth, two iguanas and a conda. Your dad caught a piranha off the side of the boat. He's proper chuffed with himself!”

Banks puzzled for a moment over “and a conda,” then guessed his mother meant an anaconda. She was in her eighties, after all. He could just imagine them in their sun hats and long-­sleeved shirts, sweating in the heat, busy spending their inheritance. Good for them, he thought. They had never got much out of life, and they had had to suffer the death of their favorite son, Roy, not so very long ago. Spend it while you're alive to enjoy it, Banks thought, admiring them for their adventurousness. When he'd been young and excited by all the strange faraway places in the atlas, he could never have imagined his father—­a beer and fish-­and-­chips sort of bloke if ever there was one—­or his mother—­homemaker, queen of the overcooked roast beef and soggy sprouts—­venturing far beyond Skeggy or Clacton. But there they were, cruising the Amazon, something he had never managed to do. Banks had inherited his brother's Porsche, and for a long time he had tried to convince himself to sell it. Now that it felt lived in, he found that he sort of liked it. And it was a link with his dead brother, a link he hadn't felt when Roy was alive.

He put the postcard down beside his computer and walked through the hall to the kitchen, where he poured himself a ­couple of fingers of the Macallan 12 year. He was still working his way back to Laphroaig. He took a sip and sat at the breakfast nook to open the Janet Baker package, then went into the entertainment room and put on the disk that started with
Les nuits d'été
. He found the second disk of Oriana's
Tosca
in the CD player and put it back in its jewel case. There was a small pile of her CDs beside the amp, mostly opera and early music—­Hildegard von Bingen, Byrd, Tallis, Monteverdi—­and those damn U2 CDs she had insisted on bringing. Banks couldn't stand U2. All their songs sounded the same to him, and Bono and the bloke with the woolly hat and silly name got on his nerves. He turned up the volume on Janet Baker a notch, went to collect his whisky from the kitchen and went through to the conservatory, where he settled in his well-­worn wicker armchair.

Oriana's wide-­brimmed straw hat lay on the other chair, and on the low glass-­topped table stood two stem glasses, the red wine crystallized at the bottom. One of them had lipstick stains on the rim, a faint pink semicircle that made Banks think of Oriana's lips and her kisses. They had been running late on Thursday, he remembered, and had left in such a hurry that she had forgotten her hat and he had forgotten to clear away the glasses. There were fragments of her life all over the house, Banks realized, though they didn't live together. Oriana was still at the Chalmerses' place. It suited her—­her second family, the two daughters like younger sisters, ­people she'd known all her life, and her job as PA to Lady Veronica. And Banks liked his solitude. No reason to change things, he thought. If it ain't broke . . .

He felt a sudden urge to phone her. She was leaving for Australia in a ­couple of days on a book tour, accompanying Lady Veronica Chalmers, who wrote romances under the pseudonym Charlotte Summers. Then he remembered they had agreed not to phone. They both hated protracted good-­byes, and he knew that if he rang her, it would hurt after the call was over. Best stay with the music, whisky and memories of the weekend.

It was only the second time he had met Oriana's Italian family, and he could tell that they were still suspicious of him, Oriana's older man, but they also knew that she was special, that she wasn't one for the callous young boys of the neighborhood, who were only interested in one thing, or even in the more serious youths, who wanted to marry her and tie her to home and kitchen and keep her barefoot and pregnant. The family knew that Oriana was a free spirit, so they respected her choice and tolerated Banks. Besides, he thought the Italians were far less concerned about age differences than the more stuffy English, though he didn't know where he got that idea from. One of her uncles even called him
commissario
,
usually with a humorous glint in his eye.

Finding the privacy to make love had been difficult, as the relatives insisted on separate rooms for their unmarried guests, but Banks and Oriana had managed to circumvent the problem once or twice in the early hours. Banks was sure an aged aunt on her way back to her room from the toilet had spotted him once. She had glowered at him the rest of the weekend but said nothing, perhaps because she couldn't speak a word of English. Whether she had spoken to Oriana or one of her uncles, Banks had no idea. Oriana never brought up the matter, and he thought it best to let things lie.

The Macallan was going down nicely and the sensuous music of “Le spectre de la rose” flowed over him. It was dark outside, still a ­couple of weeks before putting the clocks forward, and all he could see was the black shape of Tetchley Fell, its ragged top a dark borderline with the lighter sky. Deliberately edging away from thoughts of Oriana, Banks let his mind drift back to the meeting he had just left.

A number of things puzzled him, not least of all whether there were any links between the tractor and the two missing boys. It was now Monday evening, and Michael Lane had not been seen since Sunday morning, thirty-­six hours ago, or thereabouts. They didn't know yet when Morgan Spencer had last been spotted, and would have to carry out more inquiries at the caravan park to find out, but if Spencer had texted Lane about a job on Sunday morning, and they had met up, then it looked as if they might both have disappeared around the same time. Thirty-­six hours was not a long time for lads their age to be gone. But then there was the human blood in the hangar and the signs of recent activity there.