A Necessary End

I

The big break came early Friday morning. The Rossghyll Guest House proved to be a dead end, and all the train crews out of York had been too busy to remember anyone, but an Edinburgh barber phoned to say he recognized Paul Boyd's photograph in the morning paper. Though Banks found the man's accent difficult to understand, he managed to learn what Paul's new haircut looked like. Even more important, he discovered that Paul had ditched his red anorak for a new grey duffle coat.

As soon as he hung up, Banks checked the map. Paul had headed north rather than to London or Liverpool. That had been a clever move; it had gained him time. But now that his photograph was on the front page of all the tabloid dailies, his time was running out. In addition to getting the photo in the papers as soon as possible, Banks and his men had also circulated Boyd's description to police in all major cities, ports and airports. It was routine, the best they could do with limited knowledge, but now there was somewhere concrete to start.

Assuming that Paul would ultimately want to leave the country, Banks took out his AA road map and ran his finger up the outline of the Scottish coast looking for ways out. He could find only two ferry routes north of Edinburgh on the east coast. The first, from Aberdeen to Lerwick, on the Shetlands, could take Boyd eventually to Bergen and Torshavn, in Norway, or to Seydhisfjordhur, in Iceland. But looking at the fine print, Banks saw that those ferries ran only in summer — and as the grey sky and drizzle outside testified, it certainly wasn't summer.

Another ferry ran from Scrabster, farther north, to Stromness, on mainland Orkney, but that hardly seemed like a place to run and hide. Boyd would stand out there like an Eskimo in the tropics.

Turning to the west coast, Banks saw dozens of broken red lines leading to such places as Brodick, on the Isle of Arran; Port Ellen, on Islay; and Stornaway, on Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides. The whole map was a maze of small islands and ferry routes. But, Banks reasoned, none of those isolated places would suit Boyd. He would be trapped, as well as conspicuous, on any of Scotland's islands, especially at this time of year.

The only trip that made any sense in the area was Stranraer to Lame. Then Boyd would be in Northern Ireland. From there, he didn't need a passport to cross the border to the Republic. Boyd was from Liverpool, Banks remembered, and probably had Irish friends.

So the first call he made, after giving Richmond and Hatchley the task of informing the other Scottish ferry ports just in case, was to the police at Stranraer. He was told that there had been no sailings the previous day because of a bad storm at sea, but this morning was calm. There were sailings at 1130, 1530, 1900 and 0300, all with easy connections from Edinburgh or Glasgow. Banks gave Boyd's description and asked that the men there keep a special watch for him, especially at ferry boardings. Next he issued the new description to police in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen and Dundee, and passed a list of smaller places to PCs Craig and Tolliver downstairs. Then he phoned Burgess, who had been keeping a low profile in his hotel room since their drunken night, and gave him the news.

Banks knew from experience that leads like this could bring results in a matter of minutes or days. He was impatient to have Boyd in and get the truth out of him, as much to test his own theories as anything else, but he'd get nowhere pacing the room. Instead, he sent for some coffee and went over the files Richmond had put together.

Information is a policeman's life-blood. It comes in from many sources: interviews, gossip, criminal records, informers, employers, newspaper reporters, and registries of births, marriages and deaths. It has to be collated, filed and cross-referenced in the hope that one day it will prove useful. DC Richmond was the best ferret they had at Eastvale, in addition to being practically invisible on surveillance and handy in a chase. Sergeant Hatchley, though tough, tenacious and good at interrogation, was too lazy and desultory to tie everything together. He overlooked minor details and took the easy way out. Put more simply, Richmond enjoyed gathering and collating data, whereas Hatchley didn't. It made all the difference.

Banks spread out the sheets in front of him. He already knew a bit about Seth Cotton, but he had to be thorough in his revision. In the end, though, the only extra knowledge he gleaned was that Cotton had been born in Dewsbury and that in the mid-seventies he had settled in Hebden Bridge and led a quiet life, as far as the local police were concerned. Richmond had picked up the accident report on Alison Cotton, which didn't say very much. Banks made a note to look into it further.

There was nothing new on Rick Trelawney, either, apart from the name and address of his wife's sister in London. It might be worth a call to get more details on the divorce.

Zoe Hardacre was a local girl. Or near enough. As Jenny had said, she hailed from Whitby on the east coast, not far from Gill's home town, Scarborough. After school she had tried secretarial work, but drifted away. Employers had complained that she couldn't seem to keep her mind on the important tasks they gave her, and that she always seemed to be in another world. That other world was the one of the occult: astrology, palmistry and tarot card readings. She had studied the subjects thoroughly enough to be regarded as something of an expert by those who knew about such things. Now that the occult seemed to have come into fashion among the New Age yuppie crowd, she made a living of sorts producing detailed natal charts and giving tarot readings. Everyone seemed to agree that Zoe was harmless, a true flower child, though too young to have been part of the halcyon days of the sixties. She seemed about as political as a flower, too: she supported human rights, and she wanted the bomb banned, but that was as far as it went. As far as Banks could make out, she had never come into contact with PC Gill.

Banks imagined him bursting into her booth at Whitby, truncheon raised, and arresting her for charlatanism; or perhaps she had read his palm and told him he was a repressed homosexual. The absurdity of Banks's theories served only as a measure of his frustration over motive. The connection between one of the suspects and Gill's murder was there somewhere, but Banks didn't have enough data yet to see it. He felt as if he were trying to do a join-the-dots drawing with too few dots.

While Banks was almost convinced that Mara Delacey had been at the farm looking after the children at the time PC Gill was stabbed, he glanced over her file anyway. She had started out as a bright girl, a promising student, gaining a good degree in English, but she had fallen in with the hippie crowd when LSD, acid rock, bandanas and bright caftans were all the rage. The police knew she took drugs, but never suspected her of dealing in them. Despite one or two raids on places where she happened to be living, they had never even been able to find her in possession.

Like Zoe, Mara had done occasional stints of secretarial work, most often as a temp, and she had never really put her university education to practical use. She'd spent some time in the USA in the late seventies, mostly in California. Back in England, she had drifted for a while, then become involved with a guru and ended up living in one of his ashrams in Muswell Hill for a couple of years.

After that, the farm. There was nothing to tie Mara to PC Gill, unless he had crossed her path during the two years she had been in Swainsdale.

Banks walked over to the window to rest his eyes and lit a cigarette. Outside, two elderly tourists, guidebooks in hand, paused to admire the Norman tower, then walked into the church.

Nothing in what Banks had read seemed to get him any further. If Gill did have a connection with someone at the farm, it was well buried and he'd have to dig deep for it. Sighing, he sat down again and flipped open the next folder.

Tim Fenton had been born in Ripon and was now in his second year at Eastvale College of Further Education. With Abha Sutton, he ran the Students Union there. It was a small one, and usually stuck to in-college issues, but students were upset about government health and education policies — especially as far as they were likely to affect grants — and took every opportunity to demonstrate their displeasure. Tim, whose father was an accountant, was only nineteen and had no blots on his copy-book except for attending the seminar that got him into Special Branch's files.

Abha Sutton was born in Bradford of an Indian mother and a Yorkshire father. Again, her upbringing had been solidly middle-class, and like Tim, as Richmond had tried to tell Burgess, she had no history of violence or involvement in extremist politics. She had been living with Tim for six months now, and together they had started the college Marxist Society. It had very few members, though; many of the college students were local farmers' sons studying agriculture. Still, the Social Sciences department and the Arts faculty were expanding, and they had managed to recruit a few new members among the literary crowd.

Banks read even more closely when he got to Dennis Osmond's file. Osmond was thirty-five, born in NewcastleonTyne. His father had worked in the shipyards there, but unemployment had forced the family to move when Osmond was ten. Mr Osmond had found a job at the chocolate factory, where he'd been known as a strong union man, and he had been involved in the acrimonious and sometimes violent negotiations that marked its last days. Osmond himself, though given at first to more intellectual pursuits, had followed his father politically.

A radical throughout university, he had dropped out in his third year, claiming that the education he was being given was no more than an indoctrination in bourgeois values, and had taken up social work in Eastvale, where he'd been working now for twelve years. During that period, he had become one of the town's chief spokesmen, along with Dorothy Wycombe, for the oppressed, neglected and unjustly treated. He had also beat up Ellen Ventner, a woman he had lived with. Some of his cronies were the kind of people that Burgess would want shot on sight-shop stewards, feminists, poets, anarchists and intellectuals.

Whatever good Osmond had done around the place, Banks still couldn't help disliking the man and seeing him, somehow, as a sham. He couldn't understand Jenny's attraction to him, unless it was purely physical. And Jenny, of course, still didn't know that Osmond had once assaulted a woman. It was after one o'clock, time for a pie and a pint in the Queen's Arms. But no sooner had Banks settled down in his favourite armchair by the fire to read the Guardian than PC Craig came rushing into the pub.

"They've got him, sir," he said breathlessly. "Boyd. Caught him trying to get on the half-past-eleven ferry to Larne."

Banks looked at his watch. "It's taken them long enough to get onto us. Are they holding him?"

"No, sir. They're bringing him down. Said they should be here late this afternoon."

"No hurry, then, is there?" Banks lit a cigarette and rustled his paper. "Looks like it's all over."

But it didn't feel as if it was all over; it felt more like it was just beginning.

II

Burgess paced the office like an expectant father, puffing on his cigar and glancing at his watch every ten seconds.

"Where the bloody hell are they?" he asked for what seemed to Banks like the hundredth time that afternoon.

"They'll be here soon. It's a long drive and the roads can be nasty in this weather."

"They ought to be here by now."

The two of them were in Banks's office waiting for Paul Boyd. Scenting the kill, Burgess didn't seem able to relax, but Banks felt unusually calm. Along Market Street the shopkeepers were shutting up for the day, and it was already growing dark. In the office, the heater coughed and the fluorescent light hummed. Banks stubbed out his cigarette and said, "I'm off for some coffee. Want some?"

"I'm jittery enough as it is. Oh, what the hell. Why not? Black, three sugars."

In the corridor, Banks bumped into Sergeant Hatchley on his way downstairs. "Anything?" he asked.

"No," said Hatchley. "Still waiting to hear. I'm on my way to check with Sergeant Rowe if there's been any messages."

Banks took the two mugs of coffee back to his office and smiled when Burgess jumped at the sound of the door opening. "It's all right," he said. "Don't get excited. It's only me."

"Do you think the silly buggers have got lost?" Burgess asked, scowling. "Or broken down?"

"I'm sure they know their way around just as well as anyone else."

"You can never be sure with bloody Jocks," Burgess complained. East vale was the farthest north he had ever been, and he had already made it quite clear that he didn't care to venture any farther. "If they've let that bastard escape—" But he was interrupted by the phone. It was Sergeant Rowe. Boyd had arrived.

"Tell them to bring him up here." Burgess took out another Tom Thumb. He lit it, brushed some ash off his shirt and picked up his coffee.

A few moments later there was a knock at the door, and two uniformed men entered with Paul Boyd between them. He looked pale and distant — as well he might, Banks thought.

"Sorry, sir," said the driver. "We had a delay setting off. Had to wait till the doc had finished."

"Doctor?" Burgess said. "Why, what's wrong? Young dick-head here didn't hurt anyone, did he?"

"Him? No." The constable gave Paul a contemptuous glance. "Fainted when they caught him, that's all, then came round screaming about walls closing in. Had to get the doc to give him a sedative."

"Walls closing in, eh?" Burgess said. "Interesting. Sounds like a touch of claustrophobia to me. Never mind. Sit him down, and you two can bugger off now."

"See the desk sergeant about expenses and accommodation," Banks said to the two Scotsmen. "I don't suppose you'll be wanting to set off back tonight?"

The driver smiled. "No, sir. Thanks very much, sir."

"Thank you" Banks said. "There's a good pub across the road. The Queen's Arms. You can't miss it."

"Yes, sir."

Burgess could hardly wait to close the door behind them. Paul sat facing Banks in a tubular metal chair with a wooden seat and back. Burgess, preferring a free rein and the advantage of height, chose to lean against the wall or stride around as he talked.

"Get the sergeant in, will you?" he asked Banks. "With his notebook."

Banks sent for Hatchley, who arrived red-faced and out of breath a minute later.

"Those bloody stairs again," he grumbled. "They'll be the death of me."

Burgess pointed to a chair in the corner and Hatchley sat down obediently. He found a clean page in his notebook and took out his pencil.

"Right," said Burgess, clapping his hands. "Let's get cracking."

Paul looked over at him, hatred and fear burning in his eyes.

If Burgess had one professional fault, Banks thought, it was as an interrogator.

He couldn't seem to take any part but that of his own pushy, aggressive self. It wouldn't prove half as effective with Boyd as the Mutt & Jeff routine Banks and Hatchley had worked out, but it would have to do. Banks knew he would be forced into the role of the nice guy, the father confessor, for the duration.

"Why don't you just tell us about it?" Burgess began. "That way we won't have to resort to the Chinese water torture, will we?"

"There's nothing to tell." Boyd glanced nervously at the window. The slats of the Venetian blind were up, letting in grey light from the street below.

"Why did you kill him?"

"I didn't kill anyone."

"Did you just lose your temper, is that it? Or did someone pay you? Come on, we know you did it."

"I told you, I didn't kill anyone."

"Then how come that knife with PC Gill's blood on it also happens to have your dabs all over it too? Are you trying to tell me you never touched it?"

"I didn't say that."

"What are you trying to say?"

Paul licked his lips. "Can I have a cigarette?"

"No, you bloody can't," Burgess growled. "Not until you've told us what happened."

"I didn't do anything, honestly. I've never killed anyone."

"So why did you run?"

"I was frightened."

"What of?"

"Frightened you'd fit me up for it anyway. You know I've done time."

"Is that how you think we operate, Paul?" Banks asked gently. "Is that really what you think? You're wrong, you know. If you just tell us the truth you've nothing to fear."

Burgess ignored him. "How did your prints get on the knife?"

"I must have handled it, I suppose."

"That's better. Now when did you handle it, and why?"

Paul shrugged. "Could've been anytime."

"Anytime?" Burgess shook his head with exaggerated slowness. "No it couldn't, sonny. No it couldn't. Want to know why? Your prints were right on top, numero uno, clear as day. You were the last person to handle that knife before we found it. How do you explain that?"

"All right, so I handled it after it'd been used. That still doesn't mean I killed anyone."

"It does unless you've got a better explanation. And I haven't heard one yet."

"How did you know we'd found the knife?" Banks asked.

"I saw that shepherd find it on the moor, so I took off."

He was lying, Banks thought. Mara had told him. But he let it go for the moment. Paul fell silent. The floor creaked as Burgess paced the office. Banks lit a Silk Cut, his last, and leaned back in his chair. "Look, Paul," he said, "consider the facts. One: we found PC Gill's blood on the knife, and the doc tells us the blade fits the wound. Two: we found your prints on the handle. Three: we know you were at the demo — you were seen. Four: as soon as things start adding up, you bugger off to Scotland. Now you tell me what to make of it all. What would you think if you were me?" Paul still said nothing.

"I'm getting fed up of this," Burgess snarled. "Let's just lock the bastard up now. He's in on a warrant. We've got enough evidence. We don't need a confession. Hell, we don't even need a motive."

"No!" Paul yelled.

"No what? You don't want us to lock you up? Dark down there, isn't it? Even a normal person feels the walls closing in on him down there, in the dark."

Paul was pale and sweating now, and his mouth was clamped so tight that the muscles in his jaw quivered.

"Come on," Banks said. "Why don't you just tell us. Save us all a lot of trouble. You say you've done nothing. If that's so, you've nothing to be worried about. Why hold back?"

"Stop mollycoddling him," Burgess said. "He's not going to talk, you know that as well as I do. He's guilty as sin, and he knows it." He turned to Hatchley. "Sergeant, send for a couple of men to take dick-head here down to the cells."

"No!" Paul leaned forward and gripped the edge of the desk until his knuckles turned white.

Burgess gestured to Hatchley to sit down again. The command was a bit premature, as the sergeant moved slowly and hadn't even got as far as putting his notebook away.

"Let me make it easy for you, Paul," Banks said. "I'll tell you what I think happened and you tell me if it's true. All right?"

Paul took a deep breath and nodded.

"You took the knife from the farm. It was usually just lying around the place. It didn't belong to anyone in particular. Mara used it occasionally to cut twine and wool; maybe Seth used it sometimes to whittle a piece of wood. But that day, you picked it up, carried it to the demo with you, and killed PC Gill. Then you folded the blade over again, made your way to the edge of the crowd, and escaped down an alley. You ran to the edge of town, then across the moors back to the farm — almost four miles. About halfway there, you realized what you'd done, panicked, and chucked the knife away. Am I right, Paul?"

"I didn't kill anyone," Paul repeated.

"But am I right about the rest?"

Silence.

"It's beginning to look like the thumbscrews for you, sonny." Burgess leaned forward, his face only inches from Paul's. "I'm getting bored. I'm sick of the bloody north and this miserable bloody weather. I want to get back home to London, the civilized world. Understand? And you're standing in my way. I don't like people who stand in my way, and if they do it for long enough, they get knocked down. Savvy?"

Paul turned to Banks. "You're right about everything else," he said. "But I didn't take the knife. I didn't kill the copper."

"Police officer to you, dick-head," Burgess snapped.

"How did you end up with it?" Banks asked.

"I got knocked down," Paul said. "At the demo. And I curled up, like, with my hands behind my neck and my knees up in my chest, in the… the… what do you call it?"

"Foetal position?"

"Yes, the foetal position. There were people all around me, it was bloody awful. I kept getting booted. Then this knife got kicked towards me. I picked it up, like you said, and made off. But I didn't know it had killed anyone. I just thought it was a good knife, too good to waste, so I took it with me. Then on the moors, I saw there was blood on it, so I flung it away. That's how it happened."

"You're a bloody liar," Burgess said. "Do you think I'm an idiot? Is that what you take me for? I might be a city boy, but even I know there aren't any lights on the fucking moors. And even you're not stupid enough to lie there in the street, boots flying all around you, police everywhere, and think, 'Oh, what a pretty blood-stained knife. I must take it home with me!' You've been talking cobblers." He turned to Banks. "That's what you get for being soft with them, see. Spin you a yarn a bloody mile long."

Swiftly, he grasped the back of Paul's neck and squeezed hard. Paul hung on to the edge of the desk and struggled, almost upsetting his flimsy chair. Then, just as abruptly, Burgess let go and leaned casually against the wall.

"Try again," he said.

Paul massaged his neck and looked pleadingly at Banks, who remained impassive.

"It's true, I tell you," Paul said. "I swear it. I never killed him. I just picked up the knife."

"Let's assume we believe you," Banks said. "That still leaves us with a problem, doesn't it? And that problem is: why? Why did you pick up the murder weapon and sneak it away from the scene of the crime? See what I mean? It doesn't add up."

Paul shifted in his seat, casting nervous glances at Burgess, who stood just within his peripheral vision. "I didn't even know there was a crime," he said.

"Who are you protecting, Paul?" Banks asked.

"Nobody." But Paul had answered so quickly and loudly that even the most gullible person in the world would have known he was lying. Recognizing his slip, he turned red and stared down at his knees.

"The people at Maggie's Farm took you in and cared for you, didn't they?" Banks said. "They were probably the first people who ever did. You were lost, just out of jail, no job, nowhere to go, at the end of your tether, and then you met them. It's not surprising you'd want to protect them, Paul, but can't you see how transparent you're being? Who do you suspect?"

"I don't know. Nobody."

"Osmond, Tim Fenton, Abha Sutton? Would you go out of your way to protect them?"

Paul said nothing.

Burgess slapped the metal table. "Tell him!"

Paul jumped, startled by the sound. "I might," he said, glaring at Burgess. "I might protect anyone who killed a pig."

Burgess backhanded him across the face. Paul went with the blow and almost fell out of his chair.

"Try again, dick-head."

Banks grabbed Burgess by the elbow and led him over to the window. "Don't you think," he said between gritted teeth, "that you'd do better using your brains instead of your bloody fists?"

"What's wrong with you, Banks? Gone soft? Is that why they sent you up here?"

Banks jerked his head towards Paul. "He's used to hard knocks. They don't mean anything to him, and you bloody well ought to know that. You're satisfying your sadistic urges, that's all."

Burgess sniffed and turned back to Paul, who sat wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, sneering at both of them. He had overheard, Banks realized, and he probably thought the whole scene was staged just to throw him off balance. "You admit that when you found the knife on the ground you recognized it, right?" Banks asked.

"Yes."

"And you didn't want any of your friends at the farm to get into trouble."

"That's right."

"So you took it and threw it away."

"Yes. I went back on the moors to look for it a few times. I knew it was stupid just to throw it away without wiping it or anything, but I panicked. I should've taken it back to the farm and cleaned it up again, just like new. I know that now. I walked miles and miles looking for the bloody thing. Couldn't find it anywhere. And then that shepherd bloke turned up with it."

"So who did you think you were protecting?"

"I don't know." Paul took out a crumpled Kleenex and dabbed at the thin trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. "I've already told you, I didn't see who took the knife and I didn't see who used it."

"We'll leave it for now, then." Banks turned to Burgess. "What do you think?"

"I still think he's lying. Maybe he's not as thick as he looks. He's trying to put the blame on his mates, subtle like."

"I'm not too sure," Banks said. "He could be telling the truth. Problem is he's got no proof, has he? I mean, he could tell us anything."

"And expect us to believe it. Let's lock him up for a while, anyway. Let him cool his heels. We'll question him again later and see if everything tallies."

Paul, who had been glancing from one to the other with his mouth open, let out a cry. "No! I've told you, it's the truth. What more do you want me to do?"

Burgess shrugged and leaned back against the wall. Banks reached for a cigarette; his pack was empty. "Well, I'm inclined to believe him," he said. "At least for the time being. Are you sure you didn't see who took the knife, Paul?"

"No. It could've been anyone."

"That gives us seven suspects, am I right?" Banks counted them off on his fingers. "Seth, Rick, Zoe, Mara, Osmond, Tim and Abha. Was anyone else up there during the week before the demo? Anyone we don't know about?"

"No. And Mara wasn't there."

"But the others all were? Zoe was?"

He nodded.

"Did any of them have a reason for killing PC Gill?" Banks asked. "Anyone know him? Had a run-in with him before?"

Paul shook his head. "Maybe the students. I don't know."

"But I don't think you'd go out of your way to protect them, Paul, I really don't. Was Gill mentioned that afternoon?"

"Not that I heard."

"You see, it still doesn't ring true," Banks said. "Someone picking the knife up on purpose like that and taking it along, as if whoever did it knew he was going to do it. Premeditated, that is."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, I think you do." Banks smiled and stood up. "I'm just off for some cigarettes," he said to Burgess. "I doubt that we'll get much more out of him."

"Maybe not," Burgess agreed. "Pick me up a tin of Thumbs, will you?"

"Sure."

"And give my love to Glenys."

Banks was grateful for the cool fresh air outside the station. He stood for a moment, breathing in and out deeply, then crossed Market Street to the Queen's Arms.

"Twenty Silk Cut and a tin of Tom Thumbs, please, Cyril," he said.

"These for that mate of yours?" Cyril asked, slapping the cigars on the counter.

"I wish you'd stop calling him my mate. You'll be getting me a bad name."

"Well, my Glenys has been acting a bit funny lately. She's an impressionable lass, if you know what I mean, and headstrong. Gets it from that bloody mother of hers. It's just little things, things only a husband notices, but if I find that your mate's behind it, I'll… Well, I needn't spell it out for you, need I, Mr Banks?"

"Not to me, Cyril, no. Better not. I'll inform him of your concern."

"If you would."

Back outside, Banks noticed that the light had gone out in his office window. No doubt they'd sent Boyd down to the cells and gone for coffee. As he crossed the street, he heard a scream. It came from above, he was certain of that, but he couldn't pin-point it exactly. Apprehensive, he hurried back upstairs and opened the door. The office was dark, but it wasn't empty. When he flicked on the fluorescent light, Banks saw that Sergeant Hatchley had been sent away and only Boyd and Burgess remained. The slats on the Venetian blind had been completely closed, shutting out all the light from the street, a feat Banks himself had never been able to manage in all the time he'd been in Eastvale.

Boyd was whimpering in the chair, sweating and gasping for breath. He looked up in terror when Banks came back. "He turned the lights off," he said, struggling to get the words out, "and closed the blinds, the bastard."

Banks glared at Burgess, who simply flashed him a "who, me?" look and said, "I think he was telling the truth. At least, if he wasn't, he's just given the most convincing performance of his life."

"Under duress." Banks tossed him the cigars. Burgess caught the tin deftly, unwrapped it and offered Banks one. "Celebrate with me?"

"I prefer these." Banks lit a Silk Cut.

"You can have a smoke now if you want, kid," Burgess said to Paul. "Though with a breathing problem like yours, I'd watch it."

Paul lit up and coughed till he was red in the face. Burgess laughed.

"So, what now?" Banks asked.

"We lock him up and go home." Burgess looked at Paul. "You're going to have plenty of time for long chats with the prison shrink about that claustrophobia of yours," he said. "In fact, you could say we're doing you a favour. Don't they say the best way to deal with a phobia is to confront it? And the treatment's free. What more could you ask for? You'd have to wait years on National Health for that kind ofservice."

Paul's jaw slackened. "But I didn't do it. You said you believed me."

"It takes a lot more than that to convince me. Besides, there's tampering with evidence, accessory after the fact of murder, wasting police time, resisting arrest. You've got a lot of charges to face."

Burgess called downstairs and two constables came to escort Paul to the cells. He didn't struggle this time; he seemed to know there was no point.

When they were alone in the office, Banks turned to Burgess. "If you pull a stunt like that on my patch again," he said, "I'll kick your balls into the middle of next week, superintendent or no fucking superintendent."

Burgess held his gaze, but Banks felt that he took the threat more seriously than he had Rick Trelawney's.

After the staring match, Burgess smiled and said, "Good, I'm glad we've got that out of the way. Come on, I could murder a pint."

And he put his arm around Banks's shoulder and steered him towards the door.