Close to Home (9 page)

She put the briefcase back where it was and returned to her car. She couldn't just sit there by the roadside waiting for something to happen, but she couldn't very well leave the scene, either. In the end, she drove back to Mortsett and parked. There was no police station in the tiny hamlet, and she knew it would be no use trying to use her UHF hand radio behind so many hills, and at such a distance. Besides, it only had a range of a couple of miles. She was driving her own car, as she often did, and she hadn't got around to having the more powerful VHF radio installed. It hardly seemed necessary, as she wasn't a patrol officer and, more often than not, she simply used the car to drive to work and back, and perhaps to interview witnesses, as she had done that morning. Before she headed out on foot to find a good spot from which to watch the shelter without being seen, Annie picked up her mobile to ring the station and let Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe know what was going on.

And wouldn't you know it—the damn mobile didn't work. Out of cell range. Bloody typical. She should have known. She was quite close to Gratly, where Banks lived, and her mobile didn't work there, either.

There was an old red telephone box in the village, but the phone had been vandalized, the wires torn from the cash box.
Damn!
Unwilling to take her eyes off the shelter for too long, Annie knocked on some doors, but the van driver had been right; nobody seemed to be home, and the one old lady who did answer said she didn't have a telephone.

Annie cursed under her breath; it looked as if she was on her own for the time being. She couldn't leave the shelter unwatched, and she had no idea how long she would have to stay out there. The sooner she found a good vantage point, the better. Still, she thought, turning toward the hillside, it served her bloody well right for not calling in
before
she followed Armitage. So much for initiative.

N
ick Lowe's
The Convincer
ended and Banks slipped in David Gray's
White Ladder
. As he approached the turn-off to Peterborough, he wondered what to do first. He had rung his parents to let them know he was coming, of course, so perhaps he should go straight there. On the other hand, he was closer to Police HQ, and the sooner he introduced himself to Detective Inspector Michelle Hart, the better. So he headed for the police station in its idyllic setting just off the Nene Parkway, between the nature reserve and the golf course.

In the reception area, he asked to speak to the detective in charge of the Graham Marshall investigation, introducing himself only as Alan Banks, a childhood friend. He didn't want to appear to be pulling rank or even introduce himself as a fellow copper, at least not at first, not until he saw which way the wind was blowing. Besides, just out of curiosity, he wanted to know how they treated an ordinary member of the public who came forward with information. It would do no harm to play a bit of a game.

After he had been waiting about ten minutes, a young woman opened the locked door that led to the main part of the station and beckoned him inside. Conservatively dressed in a navy-blue suit, skirt below the knees, and a button-down white blouse, she was petite and slim, with shoulder-length blond hair parted in the middle and tucked behind her small,
delicate ears. She had a jagged fringe that came almost down to her eyes, which were a startling green, a color Banks remembered seeing somewhere in the sea near Greece. Her mouth was slightly down-turned at the edges, which made her look a bit sad, and she had a small, straight nose. All in all, she was a very attractive woman, Banks thought, but he sensed a severity and a reserve in her—a definite “No Entry” sign—and there was no mistaking the lines that suffering had etched around her haunting and haunted eyes.

“Mr. Banks?” she said, raising her eyebrows.

Banks stood up. “Yes.”

“I'm Detective Inspector Hart. Please follow me.” She led him to an interview room. It felt very strange being on the receiving end, Banks thought, and he got an inkling of the discomfort some of his interviewees must have felt. He looked around. Though it was a different county, the basics were still the same as every interview room he had ever seen: table and chairs bolted to the floor, high window covered by a grille, institutional green paint on the walls, and that unforgettable smell of fear.

There was nothing to worry about, of course, but Banks couldn't help feeling just a little nervous as DI Hart put on her silver-rimmed oval reading glasses and shuffled the papers around in front of her, as he had done many times himself, to draw out the tension and cause anxiety in the person sitting opposite. It touched the raw nerve of his childhood fear of authority, even though he knew he was authority himself, now. Banks had always been aware of that irony, but a situation like this one really brought it home.

He also felt that DI Hart didn't need to act this way with him, that she was putting on too much of a show. His fault, perhaps, for not saying who he was, but even so, it was a bit heavy-handed to talk to him in an official interview room. He had come in voluntarily, and he was neither a witness nor a suspect. She could have found an empty office and sent for coffee. But what would he have done? The same, probably;
it was the “us and them” mentality, and in her mind he was a civilian.
Them.

DI Hart stopped playing with her papers and broke the silence. “So you say you can help with the Graham Marshall investigation?”

“Perhaps,” said Banks. “I knew him.”

“Have you any idea at all what might have happened to him?”

“I'm afraid not,” said Banks. He had intended to tell her everything but found it wasn't as easy as that. Not yet. “We just hung around together.”

“What was he like?”

“Graham? It's hard to say,” said Banks. “I mean, you don't think about things like that when you're kids, do you?”

“Try now.”

“He was deep, I think. Quiet, at any rate. Most kids joked around, did stupid stuff, but Graham was always more serious, more reserved.” Banks remembered the small, almost secret smile as Graham had watched others act out comic routines—as if he didn't find them funny but knew he had to smile. “You never felt you were fully privy to what was going on in his mind,” he added.

“You mean he kept secrets?”

“Don't we all?”

“What were his?”

“They wouldn't have been secrets if I knew them, would they? I'm just trying to give you some sense of what he was like. There was a secretive side to his nature.”

“Go on.”

She was becoming edgy, Banks thought. Rough day, probably, and not enough help. “We did all the usual stuff together: played football and cricket, listened to music, talked about our favorite TV shows.”

“What about girlfriends?”

“Graham was a good-looking kid. The girls liked him, and he liked them, but I don't think he had anyone steady.”

“What kind of mischief did he get up to?”

“Well, I wouldn't want to incriminate myself, but we broke a window or two, did a bit of shoplifting, played truant, and we smoked cigarettes behind the cycle sheds at school. Pretty much normal stuff for teenagers back then. We didn't break into anyone's home, steal cars or mug old ladies.”

“Drugs?”

“This was 1965, for crying out loud.”

“Drugs were around back then.”

“How would you know? You probably weren't even born.”

Michelle reddened. “I know King Harold got an arrow in his eye at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, and I wasn't born then.”

“Okay. Point taken. But drugs…? Not us, at any rate. Cigarettes were about the worst we did back then. Drugs may have been increasingly popular with the younger generation in London, but not with fourteen-year-old kids in a provincial backwater. Look, I should probably have done this before, but…” He reached into his inside pocket and took out his warrant card, laying it on the desk in front of her.

Michelle looked at it a minute, picked it up and looked more closely, then slid it back across the desk to Banks. She took off her reading glasses and set them on the table. “Prick,” she whispered.

“Come again?”

“You heard me. Why didn't you tell me from the start you were a DCI instead of playing games and stringing me along, making me feel like a complete fool?”

“Because I didn't want to give the impression I was trying to interfere. I'm simply here as someone who knew Graham. Besides, why did you have to come on so heavy-handed? I came here to volunteer information. There was no need to put me in an interview room and use the same tactics you use on a suspect. I'm surprised you didn't leave me here alone to stew for an hour.”

“You're making me wish I had.”

They glared at each other in silence for a few moments, then Banks said, “Look, I'm sorry. I had no intention of making you feel foolish. And you don't need to. Why should you? It's true that I knew Graham. We were close friends at school. We lived on the same street. But this isn't my case, and I don't want you to think I'm pushing my nose in or anything. That's why I didn't announce myself at first. I'm sorry. You're right. I should have told you I was on the Job right from the start. Okay?”

Michelle gazed at him through narrowed eyes for a while, then twitched the corners of her lips in a brief smile and nodded. “Your name came up when I was talking to his parents. I would have got in touch eventually.”

“The powers that be not exactly overwhelming you with assistance on this one, then?”

Michelle snorted. “You could say that. One DC. It's not a high priority case, and I'm the new kid on the block. New
girl
.”

“I know what you mean,” Banks said. He remembered first meeting Annie Cabbot when she was put out to pasture at Harkside and he was in Outer Siberia back in Eastvale. That hadn't been a high priority case to start with, either, but it had turned into one. He could sympathize with DI Hart.

“Anyway,” she went on, “I didn't know you were a copper. I suppose I should call you ‘sir'? Rank and all?”

“Not necessary. I'm not one to stand on ceremony. Besides, I'm on your patch here. You're the boss. I do have a suggestion, though.”

“Oh?”

Banks looked at his watch. “It's one o'clock. I drove down from Eastvale this morning without stopping and I haven't had a thing to eat. Why don't we get out of this depressing room and talk about Graham over lunch? I'll pay.”

Michelle raised on eyebrow. “You asking me out to lunch?”

“To discuss the case. Over lunch. Yes. Dammit, I'm hungry. Know any decent pubs around here?”

She gazed at him again, apparently appraising him for any imminent risk he might pose to her. When she couldn't seem to think of anything, she said, “Okay. I know a place. Come on. But I'm paying my own way.”

 

What a stupid bloody decision it had been to take to the high ground, Annie Cabbot thought as she trudged illegally up the footpath, trying to avoid the little clusters of sheep droppings that seemed to be everywhere, and failing as often as not. Her legs ached and she was panting with effort, even though she thought of herself as pretty fit.

She wasn't dressed for a walk in the country, either. Knowing she was visiting the Armitages again that morning, she had dressed in a skirt and blouse. She was even wearing tights. Not to mention the navy pumps that were crippling her. It was a hot day, and she could feel the sweat trickling along every available channel. Stray tresses of hair stuck to her cheeks and forehead.

As she climbed, she kept glancing behind at the shepherd's shelter, but nobody approached it. She could only hope that she hadn't been spotted, that the kidnapper, if that was what this was all about, wasn't watching her through binoculars from a comfortable distance.

She found a spot she thought would do. It was a gentle dip in the daleside a few yards off the footpath. From there she could lie on her stomach and keep a close eye on the shelter without being seen from below.

Annie felt the warm, damp grass against her body, smelled its sweetness as she lay flat on her stomach, binoculars in hand. It felt good, and she wanted to take off all her clothes, feel the sun and earth on her bare skin, but she told herself not to be such a bloody fool and get on with the job. She compromised by taking off her jacket. The sun beat down on the back of her head and her shoulders. She had no suntan lotion with her, so she put the jacket over the back of her neck, even though it felt too hot. Better than getting sunstroke.

When she had got settled, there she lay. Waiting. Watching. Thoughts drifted through her head the way they did when she settled down to meditation, and she tried to practice the same technique of letting them go without dwelling on them. It started as a sort of free association, then went way beyond: sunlight; warmth; skin; pigment; her father; Banks; music; Luke Armitage's black room; dead singers; secrets; kidnapping; murder.

Flies buzzed around her, snapping her out of the chain of association. She waved them away. At one point, she felt a beetle or some insect creeping down the front of her bra and almost panicked, but she managed to get it off her before it got too far. A couple of curious rabbits approached, twitched their noses and turned away. Annie wondered if she would end up in Wonderland if she followed one.

She took long, deep breaths of grass-scented air. Time passed. An hour. Two. Three. Still nobody came to pick up the briefcase. Of course, the shepherd's shelter was off-limits because of foot-and-mouth, as was all open countryside, but that hadn't stopped Martin Armitage, and she was certain it wouldn't stop the kidnapper, either. In fact, it was probably why the place had been chosen: little chance of anyone passing by. Most people in the area were law-abiding when it came to the restrictions, because they knew how much was at stake, and the tourists were staying away, taking their holidays abroad or in the cities instead. Normally, Annie obeyed the signs, too, but this was an emergency, and she knew she hadn't been anywhere near an infected area in weeks.

She wished she had something to eat and drink. It was long past lunchtime now, and she was starving. The heat was also making her thirsty. And there was something else, she realized, a more pressing urge: she needed to go to the toilet.

Well, she thought, looking around and seeing nothing but sheep in every direction, there's a simple remedy for that. She moved a few yards away from her flattened spot on the
ground, checked for nettles and thistles, then took off her tights, squatted and peed. At least a woman could do that during surveillance in the countryside, Annie thought with a smile. It was a bit different if you were sitting cooped up in your car on a city street, as she had found out more than once in the past. Before she had finished, two low-flying jets from a nearby U.S. airbase screamed over, seeming no more than twenty feet or so from her head. She wondered if the pilots had got a good view. She gave them the finger, the way Americans did.

Back on her stomach, she tried her mobile again on the off chance that it might just have been local interference before, but still no luck. The moor was a dead zone.

How long should she wait? she wondered. And why hadn't he come? The money was just lying there. What if he didn't come before nightfall and the lovers returned, more important things than foot-and-mouth on their minds? Several thousand quid as well as a quick bonk would be an unexpected bonus for them.

Her stomach rumbling, tongue dry against the roof of her mouth, Annie picked up the binoculars again and trained them on the shelter.

 

Michelle drove Banks to a pub she knew near the A1, wondering more than once on the way why she was doing this. But she knew the answer. She was bored with routine, bored first with tracking down the paperwork, and then bored with reading through it. She needed to get out, blow the cobwebs away, and this was the opportunity to do that and work as well.