In a Dry Season (57 page)

Wearily, Vivian stood up and reached for her overnight bag. There was something else she had steeled herself to do while she was in Leeds, and she had set aside Friday afternoon, after the interview, for it. Before that, though, she would make time to call at the art gallery and see Michael Stanhope's painting.

When the phone rang on Thursday morning, Banks snatched the receiver from its cradle so hard he fumbled it and dropped it on the desk before getting a good grip.

“Alan, what's going on? You almost deafened me.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“It's Jenny.”

“I know. I recognized your voice. How are you?”

“Well, don't sound so excited to hear from me.”

“I'm sorry, Jenny, really. It's just that I'm expecting an important call.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“The case I'm working on.”

“That one you told me about? The war thing?”

“It's the only one I've got. Jimmy Riddle's made sure my cases have been thin on the ground lately.”

“Well, I won't take up much of your time. It just struck me that I was rather . . . well, emotional . . . on our last meeting. I want to apologize for dumping all over you, as they say in California.”

“What are friends for?”

“Anyway,” Jenny went on. “By way of an apology, I'd like to invite you to dinner. If you think you can tolerate my cooking, that is?”

“It's bound to be better than mine.”

She laughed a little too quickly and a little too nervously. “Don't count on it. I thought we could, you know, just talk about things over a meal and a bottle of wine. A lot's happened to both of us this past year.”

“When?”

“How about tomorrow, sevenish?”

“Sounds fine.”

“Are you sure it won't cause any problems?”

“Why should it?”

“I don't know . . . I just . . . ” Then her voice brightened.

“That's great. I'll see you tomorrow about seven, then?”

“You're on. I'll pick up some wine.”

After he hung up, Banks sat back and thought about the invitation. Dinner with Jenny. At her place. That would be interesting. Then he thought about Annie, and that cast a shadow over him. She had basically cut him dead on the phone yesterday. After such quick and surprising intimacy, her coldness came as a shock. It was a long time since he
had been given the cold shoulder by a girlfriend he had known for such a short time, and the whole thing brought back shades of adolescent gloom. Time to break out the sad songs again. Cry along with Leonard Cohen and learn how to get the best out of your suffering.

But he was anxious to hear from Annie about the East Anglia connection. She had said today at the latest, after all. He toyed with the idea of phoning her, but in the end decided against it. Whatever their personal problems, he knew she was a good enough copper to let him know the minute she got the information he'd asked for. Shortly before eleven, she did.

“I'm sorry for the delay,” she said. “What with time differences and faulty fax machines, well, I'm sure you know . . . ”

“That's all right. Just tell me what you've discovered.” Banks had already come to one or two conclusions of his own since his last talk with Annie, and he felt the tingling tremor of excitement that usually came as the pieces started to fall together; it was a feeling he hadn't experienced in quite a while.

“First off,” Annie said, “there definitely
was
an American air base near Hadleigh in
1952
.”

“What were they doing there?”

“Well, the
US
armed forces cleared out of England after the war, but a lot of them stayed on in Europe, especially Berlin and Vienna. The war hadn't solved the Russian problem. Anyway, the Americans came back to operate from British air bases in
1948
, during the Berlin blockade and airlift. The first thing they did was deploy long-range B-
29
bombers from four air bases in East Anglia. All this is from my contact in Ramstein. Apparently, there were so
many bases by
1951
that they had to change their organizational structure to deal with them.”

“Any familiar names?”

“Just one. Guess who ran the
PX
?”

“Edgar Konig.”

“The very same. You don't sound so surprised.”

“Not really. What did you find out about him?”

“He left Rowan Woods in May
1945
with the rest of the
448
th and spent some time in Europe, then he returned to America. He was assigned to the base near Hadleigh in summer
1952
.”

“He stayed in the air force all that time?”

“Seems that way. I suppose he had a pretty good job.

Lots of perks. Tell me, why doesn't it surprise you? Why not one of the other Americans?”

“The whisky and the Luckies.”

“What?”

“In Vivian Elmsley's manuscript. She said there was a bottle of whisky smashed on the floor and an
unopened
carton of Lucky Strikes on the kitchen counter. It's hardly concrete evidence of anything, but I don't think a carton of Luckies would have stayed unopened for very long in wartime, do you?”

“Brad could have brought them.”

“Possible. But it was
PX
who had easiest access to the stores,
PX
who always supplied the goodies. The manuscript also mentioned a farewell party at Rowan Woods that night.
PX
must have got drunk and finally plucked up courage. He'd sneaked out of the base and brought the presents that night. One last-ditch attempt to buy what he yearned for. Gloria resisted and . . . Matthew only came in afterwards, the poor sod. Any idea where
PX
was
between
1945
and
1952
?”

“No. I can ask Mattie to check, if it's important. You're thinking there might have been others?”

“Possibly. Do we know
anything
more about him?”

“No. Mattie said she'd try to find out what she can— such as when and why he was discharged and if he's still alive, but she doesn't hold out a lot of hope. It's not their official position to give out such information, but Mattie's a mystery fan and it seems I've piqued her curiosity. She's become quite an ally.”

“Good. See what you can do. Let's see if we can link him to any other murders. How old would he be now if he were still alive?”

“According to Mattie's information, he'd be about seventy-five.”

“A possibility, then.”

“Could be. I'll talk to you later.”

When Annie had hung up, Banks felt restless. Some-times waiting was the most difficult part; that was when he smoked too much and paced up and down, bad habits from his Met days he hadn't quite got rid of. There were a couple of things he could do in the meantime. First, he dialled Jenny Fuller's number.

“Alan,” she said. “Don't tell me you want to cancel?”

“No, no. It's nothing like that. Actually, I need you to do a little favour for me.”

“Of course. If I can.”

“Didn't you say at lunch the other day that you trained with the
FBI
profilers?”

“At Quantico. Yes. And you said you thought profiling was a load of bollocks.”

“Forget that for now. Do you have any contacts there?
Anyone close enough to ask a personal favour. It might be a bit quicker than an official request.”

Jenny paused a moment. “Well, there is
one
fellow, yes. Why do you ask?”

Banks filled her in on the new developments, then said, “This Edgar Konig, I'd like you to ask your friend to check his record. If he's the sort of man I think he is, the odds are that he'll have one.
DS
Cabbot's working with the military authorities, but any information they can supply us with is limited.”

“I'm sure Bill will be happy to oblige, if he can,” said Jenny. “Just let me get a pencil, then you can tell me what you want to know.”

When Banks had finished giving Jenny the details, he asked
DS
Hatchley to call East Anglia and find out if a
US
airman called Edgar Konig had ever been questioned or suspected in connection with the Brenda Hamilton murder. After that, he sat back and told himself there was no rush. Nobody was running anywhere. Even if Konig did turn out to be the killer, even if he were still alive, there was no way he could know the North Yorkshire Police were onto him after all this time.

Nineteen

O
n Friday, the rep dropped Vivian back at her hotel a little later than she had expected. There had been a delay at the radio station when the sound technician discovered, halfway through the interview, that Vivian's microphone was faulty. She had to do the whole thing again. It was after four o'clock when she got out of the car, and the sky looked heavy and dark, the air crackling with pre-storm tension. In the distance, she could hear hesitant rumbles of thunder and see faint lighting flashes. Even the Metropole's façade, lovingly restored to its original orange terracotta, looked as black as it had when she had stayed there with Charlie all those years ago.

She would have liked nothing better than to rest in her room for an hour or so, perhaps take a long bath, but it would be fully dark before long. She supposed she could put off her trip and go another time. Tomorrow would be taken up with signings in York and Harrogate, but she could always catch a later train and make the visit on Sunday morning. No. She would not procrastinate. There was also something ironically appealing to the writer in her about visiting the place during a storm.

She called the concierge and asked him to arrange for a taxi, then she put on her raincoat and waterproof boots.

The car was waiting downstairs, and she ducked in the back with her umbrella and gave the driver directions. The rain had started spotting now, making huge dark blobs on the pavement. The driver, a young Pakistani, tried to practise his English by making conversation about the weather, but he soon gave up and settled in to concentrate on his driving.

Woodhouse Road was busy with people leaving work early for the weekend, and the worsening weather made it a matter of stop and start. Beyond the city limits, though, things eased up.

As Vivian gazed out of the rain-streaked window, hypnotized by the slapping of the windscreen wipers, she thought about her visit to Leeds City Art Gallery yesterday. Seeing the nude painting of Gloria had evoked such a complex response in her that she still hadn't been able to sort out all the strands.

She had never seen Gloria naked before, had never accompanied her and Alice and the others on their skinny-dipping expeditions, out of shyness and out of shame at her body, so to see the smooth skin and the alluring curves as interpreted by Michael Stanhope's expert eye and hand came as a revelation.

What disturbed Vivian most of all was the pang of desire the painting engendered in her. She had thought herself long past such feelings, if she had ever, indeed, experienced them at all. True, she had loved Gloria, but she had never admitted to herself, had never even realized, that she might have loved her in
that
way. Now, as she remembered the innocent physical intimacies they had shared—painting one another's legs; the dancing lessons, when she had felt Gloria's body close to hers and breathed
her perfume; the little kiss on her cheek after the wedding—she wasn't sure how innocent it had all been. The feelings, the urges, had been there, but Vivian had been ignorant of such things and had suppressed them. In the art gallery, she had felt like a pervert looking at pornography; not because there was anything pornographic about Stanhope's painting, but because of her own thoughts and feelings attached to it.

She thought of that moment when she had kissed Gloria's still-warm forehead before covering her with the blackout cloth.
“Goodbye, sweet Gloria. Goodbye, my love.”

“Pardon me?” said the driver, turning his head. “What? Oh, nothing. Nothing.”

Vivian shrank into her seat. Beyond Otley there was very little traffic. The roads were narrow, and they got stuck behind a lorry doing only about thirty for a while. It was after five o'clock when the driver pulled up in the car park near Thornfield Reservoir. The rain was coming down hard now, pattering against the leaves. At least, Vivian thought, in this weather she could be sure of having the place to herself. She told the driver she would only be about fifteen minutes and asked him to wait. He picked up a newspaper from the seat beside him.

A second car pulled up in the other car park, behind the high hedge, but Vivian was already walking through the woods, and she failed to notice it. The path was treacherous, as if the parched earth had been yearning for the chance to suck up every drop of rain that fell, and Vivian had to be really careful not to slip as she made her way slowly down the embankment, poking her umbrella in the ground ahead and using it as a sort of brake. God only knew how she would get back up again.