Blood at the Root (17 page)

The Dutch coast came into view: first the dull-brown sandbars where the gray sea ended in a long white thread; then the dikes, marking off the reclaimed land, protecting it from the water level.

Banks turned off his Walkman in the middle of “Stop Breaking Down.” He always listened to loud music when flying – which wasn’t very often – because it was the only thing he could hear over the roar of the engines. And he hadn’t played
Exile on Main Street
in so long he’d forgotten just how good it was. The Rolling Stones’ raucous rhythm and blues, he found, also had the added advantage of blocking out depressing thoughts.

The plane banked lower over the patchwork of green and brown fields, and Banks could soon make out cars on the long straight roads, rooftops glinting in the midday sun. It was as lovely an autumn day in the Netherlands as it had been in Yorkshire.

Banks rubbed his eyes. He had spent a sleepless night in Brian’s room because Sandra had insisted it would only make things more difficult if they slept together. She was right, he knew, but still it rankled. It wasn’t even a matter of sex. Somehow it seemed so unfair, when threatened with the loss of someone you had loved for over twenty years, that you didn’t even get that one last night of warmth and companionship together to remember and cherish. It felt like all the things you had left unsaid when someone died.

No matter how long Sandra said that she had been grappling with the problem, her decision had come as a shock to Banks. Perhaps, as she had argued, that was a measure of how much he had turned his back, drifted away from the relationship, but somehow her words didn’t soften the blow. Now, more than anything, he felt numb, a pathetic figure floating around in zero gravity.

When he thought of Sandra, he thought mostly of the early days in London, where they lived together for about a year before they got married. It was the mid-seventies. Banks was just finishing his business diploma, already thinking about joining the police, and Sandra was taking a secretarial course. Every Sunday, if he didn’t have to work, they went on long walks around the city and its parks, Sandra practicing her photography and Banks developing his copper’s eye for suspicious characters. Somehow, in his memory, it was always autumn on these walks: sunny but cool, with the leaves crackling underfoot. And when they got back to the tiny Notting Hill flat, they’d play music, laugh, talk, drink wine and make love.

Then came marriage, children, financial responsibilities and a career that demanded more and more of Banks’s time and energy. Most of his friends on the force were divorced before the seventies were over, and they all asked in wonder and envy how he and Sandra managed to survive. He didn’t really know, but he put a lot of it down to his wife’s independent spirit. Sandra was right about that. She wasn’t the kind of person who simply hung around the house and waited for him to turn up, fretting and getting angrier by the minute as the dinner was ruined and the kids screamed for bedtime stories from Daddy. Sandra went her own way; she had her own interests and her own circle of friends. Naturally, more responsibility for the children fell on her shoulders, because Banks was hardly ever home, but she never complained. And for a long time, it worked.

After Banks’s near burnout on the Met and a long rocky patch in the marriage, they moved to Eastvale, where Banks thought things would settle down and the two of them would enjoy a rural, peaceful and loving drift into middle age together; the kind of thing that most couples married as long as they had been experience.

Wrong.

He looked at his watch. Sandra would be on the train to Croydon now, and whatever happened, whatever she finally decided, things would never be the same between them again. And there was nothing he could do about it. Not a damn thing.

He picked up that morning’s
Yorkshire Post
from the empty seat beside him and looked at the headline again: “WORLD WAR TWO HERO DIES AT GRANDSON’S FUNERAL: Neo-Nazis responsible, says granddaughter.” There was no photograph, but the basic facts were there: the Nazi salute, Frank Hepplethwaite’s attack, Maureen Fox’s spirited defense. All in all, it made depressing reading. And then there was the brief sidebar interview with Motcombe himself.

Motcombe deeply regretted the “pointless death” of “war hero” Frank Hepplethwaite, he began, while pointing out how ironic it was that the poor man had died attacking the only people who dared demand justice for his grandson’s killers. Naturally, on further thought, neither he nor any member of his organization had any intention of pursuing charges against Maureen Fox, even though the head wound she gave him required five stitches; things had just got out of hand in the heat of the moment, and he could quite understand her attacking him and his friends with a plank. Grief makes people behave irrationally, he allowed.

Of course, Motcombe went on, everyone knew who had killed Jason Fox, and everyone also knew why the police were powerless to act. That was just the state of things these days. He was sympathetic, but unless the government finally decided to act and do something about immigration, then…

Jason was a martyr of the struggle. Every true Englishman should honor him. If more people listened to Motcombe’s ideas, then things could only change for the better. The reporter, to give her due credit, had managed to stop Motcombe from turning the entire interview into propaganda. Either that or the copy editor had made extensive cuts. Even so, it made Banks want to puke. If anyone was the martyr in this, it was Frank Hepplethwaite.

Frank reminded Banks of his own father in many ways. Both had fought in the war, and neither spoke very much about it. Their racial attitudes were much the same, too. Banks’s father might complain about immigrants taking over the country, changing the world he has known all his life, making it suddenly alien and unfamiliar, threatening even. And in the same way, Frank might have let slip a remark about a tight-fisted Jew. But when it came down to it, if anyone needed help, black or Jewish, Banks’s dad would have been first in line, with Frank Hepplethwaite probably a close second.

As unacceptable as even these racial attitudes were, Banks thought, they were a hell of a long way from those held by Neville Motcombe and his like. Banks’s dad’s view, like Frank’s, was based on ignorance and anxiety, on fear of change, not on hatred. Perhaps in Motcombe’s case the hatred sprang from an initial fear, but in most people it never went that far. Just like a lot of people have bad childhoods but they don’t all become serial murderers.

The wheels bumped on the runway, and soon Banks was drifting into the arrivals hall with the crowds. He was traveling light, with only one holdall, so he didn’t have to wait at the baggage claim. The place was like a small city, bustling with commerce, complete with its shops, bank, post office and tourist-information desk. A colleague had told him a while ago that even pornography was on sale openly at Schiphol. He had neither the time nor the inclination to look for it.

The first thing Banks needed when he got off a plane alive was a cigarette. He followed the signs to the bus stop and found he had a fifteen-minute wait. Perfect. He enjoyed a leisurely smoke, then got on the bus. Soon it was speeding along the motorway under grids of electrical wires and tall street lamps.

The excitement of arrival pushed Banks’s problems into the background for the moment, and he began to take some pleasure in his rebellion, his little act of irresponsibility. So that no one would feel he had disappeared completely into thin air, he had rung Susan Gay and told her he was taking the weekend off to go to Amsterdam and should be back sometime Monday. Susan had sounded puzzled and surprised, but she had made no comment. What could she say, anyway? Banks was her boss. Now, as the bus sped toward the city center, he began to savor the coming hours, whatever they might bring. It could hardly be worse than life in Eastvale right now.

He had been to Amsterdam once before, with Sandra, one summer when they were both between college and jobs. He remembered the bicycles, canals, trams and houseboats. The place was full of leftover sixties spirit back then, and they had tried it all while they could: the Paradiso, the Milky Way, the Vondelpark, the drugs – well, marijuana, at least – as well as taking in all the museums and the tourist sights.

Stationsplein looked much the same. The air was warm, tinged only faintly with the bad-drains smell from the canals. Trams clanked about in all directions. A Perspex-covered boat set off on its canal tour. Arrows of ripples hit the stone quay.

Mixed with the late-season tourists and ordinary folk were all the post-hippie youth styles: punk spikes, a green Mohawk, studded leather vests, short bleached hair, earrings, nose rings, pierced eyebrows.

Banks found the taxi rank nearby. He would have liked to walk after being cooped up on the plane and the bus, but he hadn’t got his bearings yet. He didn’t even know how to get to the hotel, or how far it was.

The taxi was clean and the driver seemed to recognize the name of the hotel. Soon he had negotiated his way out of the square and they were heading along a broad, busy street lined with trees, arcades, shops and cafés. The pavements were crowded with tourists, even in early October, and Banks noticed that some of the cafés and restaurants had tables out on the street. He opened the window a little and the smell of fresh-brewed coffee came in. God, it was like a summer’s day.

The driver turned, crossed a picturesque bridge, then continued along one of the canals. Finally, after a few more turns, he pulled up in front of the hotel on Keizersgracht. Banks paid what seemed like an exorbitant amount of guilders for such a short trip, then hefted his holdall out of the boot.

He looked up at the unbroken row of buildings in front of him. The hotel was small and narrow, about six floors high, with a yellow sandstone facade and a gabled roof. It was wedged in a long terrace of uneven seventeenth- and eighteenth-century buildings that had once, Banks guessed, probably been merchants’ houses. Some were built of red brick, some of stone; some had been painted black or gray; some had gables, some had flat roofs. All of them seemed to have plenty of windows.

Banks dodged a couple of cyclists and walked into the hotel lobby. The man at the desk spoke good English. Banks remembered from his previous trip that most people spoke good English in Amsterdam. They had to do. After all, how many English people bothered to learn Dutch?

Yes, the man said, his room was ready, and he was delighted to be able to offer a canal view. Breakfast would be served in the ground-floor lounge between seven o’clock and nine. He was sorry that the hotel had no bar of its own, but there were plenty of fine establishments within a short walking distance. He hoped Mr. Banks would be comfortable.

When Banks pulled out his credit card, the clerk waved it away, telling him the room was fully paid for until Monday morning. Banks tried to discover who had paid for it, but the clerk became extremely coy, and his English went downhill fast. Banks gave up.

Then the clerk handed him a message: a single sheet of paper bearing a typed message that read “De Kuyper’s: 16:00hr.”

Banks asked what “De Kuyper’s” meant and was told it was a brown café – a sort of Dutch local pub – about a hundred meters to his left along the canal. It was on a quiet street corner and would probably have a few tables outside. A very nice place. He couldn’t miss it.

The room was a gabled attic up five flights of narrow stairs. When Banks got there, he was panting and beads of sweat had broken out on his forehead.

Though there was hardly room to swing a dead cat and the bed was tiny, the room was clean, with black timber beams and pale blue wallpaper. It smelled pleasantly of lemon air freshener. A blue ashtray stood on the bedside table, beside the reading light and telephone. There were also a small television set and en suite facilities.

The canal view more than made up for any inadequacies. Banks particularly liked the way the ceiling and the black-painted beams sloped down toward the gabled window, drawing the eye to its perspective. And sure enough, he looked down on Keizersgracht and the tall, elegant facades of the buildings opposite. The room was a little too warm and stuffy, so he opened the window, letting in hints of distant street sounds. He looked at his watch. Just after two. Plenty of time for a shower and a nap before the mystery meeting. But first he headed for the telephone. There was always a chance that Sandra had changed her mind.

Susan Gay was worried about Banks. Kicking her heels back in her office with black coffee and a so-very-sinful KitKat, she thought about the brief, puzzling phone call. What the hell did he think he was doing, taking a few days off in the middle of a major investigation? Just when they were getting close to tracking down Mark Wood. All right, so it was the weekend. Or almost. But didn’t he know that Jimmy Riddle would go spare if he found out? Even Superintendent Gristhorpe would be annoyed.

There had to be more to it. The way he had sounded on the phone bothered her. Abrupt. Distracted. Not like him at all.

Was it the Amsterdam thing? Is that what had him so worried? Was there some danger involved, or something illegal? Banks didn’t often act outside the law, not like some coppers Susan had known, but he did sometimes – they all did – if he felt there was no other way. Was he up to something?

Well, she concluded, she didn’t know, and there was probably no way of finding out until he got back and revealed all, if he did. Until then, the best thing to do was get on with her work and stop behaving like a mother hen.

She hadn’t had a lot of luck tracking Mark Wood down so far. It would take her forever to check out all the listings in the telephone directory. Even then, he might not live in the Leeds area or have a telephone. Sergeant Hatchley was in Leeds today with one of his old cronies from Millgarth visiting the properties Motcombe owned. Maybe they would turn up something, but she doubted it.

She was just about to pick up the phone and start dialing down her list when it rang.

“Is that DC Gay?” the voice said. “Susan?”

“Yes.” She didn’t know who it was.

“It’s Vic here, Vic Manson, from Fingerprints.”

“Ah, of course. Sorry, I didn’t recognize your voice for a moment. How’s it going?”

“I was trying to call Alan, but apparently he’s not in his office. All I could get at home was his answering machine. Do you know where he is?”

“I’m afraid he won’t be in at all today.”

“Not ill, I trust?”

“Can I help, Vic?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Do you know much about fingerprints?”

“Not a lot. Have you got some news?”

“Well, yes, in a way. Though it’s not very good, I’m afraid. Not as good as I’d hoped for.”

“I’m listening.”

“Right. Well, when I talked to Alan earlier in the week I was testing the glass from the broken bottle found near Jason Fox’s body.”

“I remember,” Susan said. “He said something about spraying it with SuperGlue in an aquarium.”

Manson laughed. “Yes. Cyanoacrylate fuming, as a matter of fact.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Yes… well, I’m sorry, but it didn’t work. We found nothing on the glass. Probably because of the rain.”

“And that’s it?”

“Not entirely. Do you know anything at all about ninhydrin?”

“Isn’t it a chemical for getting prints from paper?”

“Sort of, yes. What ninhydrin does is it makes visible the amino acids you deposit with sweaty fingers, especially on paper.”

“I see. But I thought we were concerned with
glass
here, Vic, not paper?”

“Ah, yes,” said Manson. “We were. That is until it got us nowhere. But I found a couple of fragments of glass that were also covered by part of the
label
and, luckily, two of them were
under
the body, label side up, but not touching the victim’s clothing, quite protected from the rain. Amino acids are water-soluble, you see. Anyway, I don’t want to get too technical about it, but it took a long time, and I destroyed one fragment completely, but after I brought a smudge or two out with ninhydrin treatment, I was able to get much better ridge detail under laser light.”

“You got a fingerprint?”

“Now, hold on. Wait a minute,” said Manson. “I told you from the start it’s not a major breakthrough. What I got was a partial fingerprint.
Very
partial. Even with computer enhancement I couldn’t do a hell of a lot more with it. And remember, any number of people could have handled that bottle. The cellarman, the landlord, the bartender. Anyone.”

“So you’re saying it’s worthless?”

“Not completely. Oh, it certainly wouldn’t stand up in a court of law. Not enough points of comparison. I mean, it could almost be mine, at a pinch. Well, I exaggerate, but you see what I mean.”

“Yes,” said Susan, disappointed. She began to feel impatient. “Has this got us anywhere at all?”

“Well,” Manson went on, “I ran it through the new computerized matching system and I got a list of possibles. I confined the search to Yorkshire and, of course, it only applies to people whose prints we have on file.”

“And the print could belong to any person on the list?”

“Technically, yes. At least, as far as court evidence is concerned. I’m sorry. I can send it over, anyway, if you’d like?”

“Just a minute,” said Susan, feeling her pulse quicken a little. “Do you have it in front of you? The list?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s try a hunch. Could you check for a name?”

“Of course.”

“Try
Wood
. Mark Wood.”

It was worth a try. Susan could hear her heart beating fast in the silence that followed. Finally, after what seemed like a millennium, Manson said, “Yes. Yes, there is a Mark Wood. I don’t have all the details here, of course, but West Yorkshire have probably got a file on him.”

“West Yorkshire?”

“Yes. That’s where he lives. Castleford area. If he’s still at the same address, that is.”

“You’ve got the address?”

“Yes.” He read it out to her.

“And let me guess,” Susan said. “He was convicted for football hooliganism or some sort of racial incident?”

“Er… no, actually,” said Manson.

“What then?”

“Drugs.”

“Drugs?” Susan repeated. “Interesting. Thanks a lot, Vic.”

“No problem. And tell Alan I called, will you?”

Susan smiled. “Will do.”

Although Vic Manson said the evidence wouldn’t stand up in court, that didn’t matter to Susan at the moment. The link between the partial print on the beer bottle and Jason Fox’s Web-page design partner was just too strong to be coincidence.

At first, Susan had thought the other lad must have either run away or left Jason
before
the attack. Now, though, the picture looked very different indeed. Maybe they couldn’t convict Mark Wood on the basis of the fingerprint, but they could try for a confession or some sort of physical evidence. For a start, the people in the Jubilee should be able to identify him.

But first, Susan thought, reaching for her jacket and her mobile, they would have to find him. Already she was feeling tremors of excitement, the thrill of the chase, and she was damned if she was going to be stuck by herself in Eastvale while Sergeant Hatchley had all the fun and glory.