Blood At The Root

I

Frank Hepplethwaite reached for his inhaler, aimed it at the back of his throat and let off a blast of nitro. Within seconds the pain in his chest began to abate, along with that suffocating sense of panic that always came with it.

Frank sat completely still in his favorite armchair, the one that Edna had been constantly nagging him to get rid of. True, the seat cushion was worn, and it bulged like a hernia through the support slats underneath; and true, the frayed upholstery had long since lost whatever pattern it might have had and faded to a sort of dull brown with a worn, greasy spot where he had rested the back of his head year after year. But he had never found anywhere else quite so comfortable to sit and read in all his seventy-six years – and though he was seventy-six, his eyes were as good as they’d ever been. Well, almost, if he put his reading glasses on. Better than his teeth and his heart, at any rate.

When he felt steady enough again, he rested his palms on the threadbare patches of fabric and pushed himself up, slowly, to standing position. Five foot ten in his stockinged feet, and he still weighed no more than ten stone.

Face it, though, Frank, he told himself as he wrapped his scarf around his neck and reached for his tweed jacket on the hook behind the door, you won’t be able to go on like this by yourself much longer. Even now, Mrs. Weston came in once or twice a week to tidy up and make his meals. And his daughter Josie came over from Eastvale to do his washing and to vacuum.

He could still manage the little domestic tasks, like boiling an egg, washing what few dishes he used, and remaking his bed in the morning – but he couldn’t change the sheets, and any sort of elaborate meal was well beyond him. Not that he lacked the ability – he had been a passable cook in his time – he merely lacked the stamina. And for how much longer would he be able to manage even the little necessities? How long would it be before a simple visit to the toilet was beyond him, a bowel movement too much of a strain on his heart?

Best not think about that, he told himself, sensing the abyss that awaited him. Beyond this point be monsters. At least Edna had gone first, bless her soul, and while he missed her every minute he continued to live, at least he wouldn’t have to worry about her coping after he’d gone.

Frank went into the hall and paused at the front door. He rarely got any letters these days, so he was surprised to see one lying on the carpet. It must have arrived yesterday, Saturday. He hadn’t been out since Friday, hadn’t even had cause to go into the hall, so it was no wonder he hadn’t noticed it. Bending carefully, knees creaking, he picked it up and slipped it in his inside pocket. It could wait. It wasn’t a bill. At least, it didn’t look official; it didn’t have one of those windows.

He opened the door, sniffed the air and smiled. Well, well, another taste of summer, with just a hint of peat smoke from the village. What strange weather the dale had been having these past few years. Global warming, the papers said, damage to the ozone layer, greenhouse effect. Whatever all that was. Bloody grand, anyway.

He decided to be devil-may-care today and took off his scarf, then he walked down the road toward the green, pausing by the whitewashed facade of the Swainsdale Heifer to watch out for traffic hurtling across the blind corner, the way it did despite the warning signs. Then he walked on the broad cobbled area in front of the gift shop, the small Barclay’s Bank branch and the estate agent’s office, past the King’s Head to the third pub in the village, the Black Bull.

It would have to be the bloody farthest pub from his house, he always grumbled to himself, but the Black Bull had been his local for over forty years, and he was damned if he was going to change it now, even if the walk did sometimes put him out of breath. And even if the new landlord didn’t seem to give a toss for anyone but tourists with plenty of readies to flash around.

Frank had seen a dozen landlords come and go. He was all right in his way, was old Jacob – a London Jew born of one of the few families lucky enough to escape to England from Germany just before the war – and he had his living to make, but he was a tight old skinflint. A drink or two on the house now and then would make an old man’s pension go a lot farther. The last landlord had understood that. Not Jacob. He was as close with his brass as old Len Metcalfe had been over ten years back.

Frank pushed the heavy door, which creaked as it opened, and walked across the worn stone flagging to the bar. “Double Bell ’s, please,” he said.

“Hello, there, Frank,” said Jacob. “How are you today?”

Frank touched his chest. “Just a twinge or two, Jacob,” he said. “Just a twinge. Other than that I’m right as rain.”

He took his drink and wandered over to his usual small table to the left of the bar, where he could see down the corridor to the machines and the billiard table on the raised area at the far end. As usual, he said hello to Mike and Ken, who were sitting on stools at the bar agonizing over a crossword puzzle, and to that poncy southern windbag, Clive, who was sitting a stool or two down from them puffing on his bloody pipe and pontificating about sheep breeding, as if he knew a bloody thing about it. A few of the other tables were occupied by tourists, some of them kitted out for a day’s walking or climbing. It was Sunday, after all. And a fine one, at that.

Frank took a sip of Bell’s, winced at the sharpness and hoped the burning he felt as it went down was just the whiskey, not the final heart attack. Then he remembered the letter he had put in his pocket. He put on his reading glasses, reached his hand in and slipped it out.

The address was handwritten, and there was no indication of who had sent it. He didn’t recognize the writing, but then he hardly ever saw handwriting these days. Everything you got was typed or done on computers. He couldn’t make out the postmark clearly, either, but it looked like Brighouse, or maybe Bradford. It could even be Brighton or Bristol, for all he knew. Posted on Thursday.

Carefully, he tore the envelope open and slid out the single sheet of paper. It had type on both sides, in columns, and a large bold heading across the top. At first he thought it was a flyer for a jumble sale or something, but as he read, he realized how wrong he was.

Confused at first, then angry, he read the printed words. Long before he had finished, tears came to his eyes. He told himself they were Scotch tears, just the burning of the whiskey, but he knew they weren’t. He also knew who had sent him the flyer. And why.

II

Some of the more modern mortuaries were equipped with video cameras and monitor screens to make it easier for relatives to identify accident or murder victims from a comfortable distance. Not in Eastvale, though. There, the attendant still slid the body out of the refrigerated unit and slipped back the sheet from the face.

Which was odd, Banks thought, as the mortuary was certainly the most recently renovated part of that drafty old pile of stone known as Eastvale General Infirmary.

Steven and Josie Fox had at first been unwilling to come and view the body. Banks could see their point. If it was Jason, they would have to face up to his death; and if it wasn’t, then they would have gone through all the unpleasantness of looking at a badly beaten corpse for nothing.

Reluctantly, though, they had gone, refusing Banks’s offer of a police car and choosing to walk instead. Susan Gay had returned to the station.

Because the hospital was small and old and too close to the tourist shops, another, much larger, establishment was under construction on the northern edge of the town. But, for now, Eastvale General was all there was. Every time he walked up the front steps, Banks shuddered. There was something about the dark, rough stone, even on a fine day, that made him think of operations without anesthetic, of unsterilized surgical instruments, of plague and death.

He led the Foxes through the maze of high corridors and down the stairs to the basement, where the mortuary was. Banks identified himself to one of the attendants, who nodded, checked his files and touched Mrs. Fox lightly on the arm. “Please, follow me,” he said.

They did. Along a white-tiled corridor into a chilled room. There, the attendant checked his papers again before sliding out the tray on which the body lay.

Banks watched the Foxes. They weren’t touching one another at all, not holding hands or clutching arms the way many couples did when faced with such a situation. Could there really be such distance between them that even the possibility of seeing their son dead at any second couldn’t bridge? It was remarkable, Banks had often thought, how people who no longer have any feelings for one another can keep on going through the motions, afraid of change, of loneliness, of rejection. He thought of Sandra, then pushed the thought aside. He and Sandra were nothing like the Foxes. They weren’t so much separate as independent; they gave one another space. Besides, they had too much in common, had shared too much joy and pain over the years simply to go through the motions of a failed marriage, hadn’t they?

The attendant pulled back the white sheet to reveal the corpse’s face. Josie Fox put her hand to her mouth and started to sob. Steven Fox, pale as the sheet that covered his son, simply nodded and said, “It’s him. It’s our Jason.”

Banks was surprised at what a good job the mortuary had done on the boy’s face. While it was clear that he had been severely beaten, the nose was straight, the cheekbones aligned, the mouth shut tight to cover the shattered teeth. The only wrong note was the way that one eye stared straight up at the ceiling and the other a little to the left, at Mr. and Mrs. Fox.

Banks could never get over the strange effect looking at dead people had on him. Not bodies at the crime scene so much. They sometimes churned his guts, especially if the injuries were severe, but they were essentially work to him; they were human beings robbed of something precious, an insult to the sanctity of life.

On the other hand, when he saw bodies laid out in the mortuary or in a funeral parlor, they had a sort of calming effect on him. He couldn’t explain it, but as he looked down at the shell of what had once been Jason Fox, he knew there was nobody home. The pale corpse resembled nothing more than a fragile eggshell, and if you tapped it hard enough it would crack open, revealing nothing but darkness inside. Somehow, the effect of all this was to relieve him, just for a few welcome moments, of his own growing fear of death.

Banks led the dazed Foxes out into the open air. They stood on the steps of the hospital for a moment, silently watching the people come out of the small Congregationalist church.

Banks lit a cigarette. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

After a few moments, Steven Fox looked at him. “What? Oh, sorry,” he said. Then he shook his head. “No, there’s nothing. I’ll take Josie home now. Make her a nice cup of tea.”

His wife said nothing.

They walked down King Street, still not touching. Banks sighed and turned up toward the station. At least he knew who the victim was now; first, he would let his team know, and then they could begin the investigation proper.

III

Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley would normally have enjoyed nothing more than a pub crawl any day of the week, any hour of the day or night, but that Sunday, all he wanted to do as he walked into his fifth pub, the Jubilee, at the corner of Market Street and Waterloo Road, was go home, crawl into bed and sleep for a week, a month – nay, a bloody year.

For the past two weeks, his daughter April, named after the month she was born because neither Hatchley nor his wife Carol could agree on any other name, had kept him awake all night, every night, as those bloody inconvenient lumps of calcium called teeth bored their way through the tender flesh of her gums with flagrant disregard for the wee bairn’s comfort. Or for his. And he hadn’t been well-enough prepared for it. In fact, he hadn’t been prepared for it at all.

The first year or so of April’s life, you would never have known she was there, so quiet was she. At worst, she’d cry out a couple of times when she was hungry, but as soon as Carol’s tit was in her mouth she was happy as a pig in clover. And why not, thought Hatchley, who felt exactly the same way about Carol’s tit himself, not that he’d been getting much of that lately, either.

But now April had suddenly turned into a raging monster and put paid to his sleep. He knew he looked as if he’d been on the piss every morning he went into work – he could see the way they were all looking at him – but if truth be told, he hadn’t had a drink in weeks. A real drink in a pub, that was.

He remembered some story, an old wife’s tale, probably, about rubbing whiskey on a teething baby’s gums to quieten it down. Well, Carol wouldn’t let him do that – she said she had enough on her plate with one boozer in the family – so he had rubbed it on his own gums, so to speak, or rather let it caress them briefly and gently on its way down to his stomach. Sometimes that helped him get a ten-minute nap between screaming sessions. But he never had more than two or three glasses a night. He hadn’t had a hangover in so long that not only had he almost forgotten what they felt like, he was actually beginning to miss them.

So it was with both a sense of nostalgia and a feeling that he’d rather be anywhere else, especially asleep in bed, that Sergeant Hatchley entered the Jubilee that Sunday lunch-time.

Contrary to rumors around the station, Hatchley didn’t know the landlord of every pub in Eastvale. Apart from the Queen’s Arms, the station’s local, he tended to avoid the pubs near the town center, especially those on Market Street, which always seemed to be full of yobs. If there was trouble on a Saturday night, which there often was these days, you could bet it would be on York Road or Market Street.

The Jubilee was also a chain pub: all fruit machines, theme nights, trivia and overpriced food. Overpriced ale, too. Rock bands played there on Friday and Saturday nights, and it had a reputation for getting some of the best up-and-coming bands in Yorkshire. Not that Hatchley gave a toss about rock music, being a brass-band man himself. The Jubilee was also reputed to be a fertile hunting ground for birds and drugs.

On Sunday lunchtimes, though, it became a family pub, and each family seemed to have about six children in tow. All of them screaming at once.

Hatchley leaned over the bar and presented his warrant card to the barmaid as she pulled someone a pint.

“Any trouble here Saturday night, love?” he asked.

She jerked her head without looking up at him. “Better ask His Nibs over there. I weren’t working.”

Hatchley edged down the bar and shoved his way through the drinkers standing there, getting a few dirty looks on the way. He finally caught the barman’s attention and asked for a word. “Can’t you see I’m rushed off my feet?” the man protested. “What is it you want?” Like everyone else behind the bar, he wore black trousers and a blue-and-white-striped shirt with THE JUBILEE stitched across the left breast.

When Hatchley showed his card, the man stopped protesting that he was too busy and called one of the other bar staff to stand in for him, then he gestured Hatchley down to the far end of the bar where it was quiet.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “I hate bloody Sunday lunchtimes, especially after working a Saturday night.” He scratched his thinning hair and a shower of dandruff fell on his shoulders. How bloody hygienic, Hatchley thought. “My name’s Ted, by the way.”

“Aye, well, Ted, lad,” Hatchley said slowly, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but we all have our crosses to bear. First off, was there any trouble in here on Saturday night?”

“What do you mean, trouble?”

“Fights, barneys, slanging matches, hair-pulling, that sort of thing.”

Ted frowned. “Nowt out of the ordinary,” he said. “I mean, we were busy as buggery, so there was no way I could see what were going on everywhere at once, especially with the bloody racket that band were making.”

“I appreciate that,” said Hatchley, who had had the same conversation five times already that morning and was getting steadily sick of it. He slipped the sketch from his briefcase. “Recognize him?” he asked.

The barman squinted at the drawing, then passed it back to Hatchley. “Could be any number of people, couldn’t it?”

Hatchley wasn’t sure why, but he felt the back of his scalp prickle. Always a sign something wasn’t quite right. “Aye, but it’s not,” he said. “It’s an amateur artist’s reconstruction of a lad’s face, a face that were booted to a bloody pulp after closing time last night. So any help you could give us would be much appreciated, Ted.”

Ted turned pale and averted his eyes before answering. “Well, seeing as you put it like that… But I’m telling you the truth. Nothing happened.”

Hatchley shook his head. “Why don’t I find myself believing you, Ted? Can you answer me that?”

“Look.” Ted held his hand up, palm out. “I don’t want any trouble.”

Hatchley smiled, showing stained and crooked teeth. “And I’m not here to give you any.”

“It’s just…”

“Frightened of something?”

“No. It’s not that.” Ted licked his lips. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to swear to owt, but there were a lad looked a bit like that in last night. It could’ve been him.”

“What was he doing?”

“Having a drink with a mate.”

“What did this mate look like?”

“About my height. That’s five foot six. Stocky build. Tough-looking customer, you know, like he lifted weights or summat. Short fair hair, almost skinhead, but not quite. And an earring. One of them loops, like pirates used to have in old films.”

“Had you seen them before?”

“Only the one in the drawing, if it is him. Sometimes comes in on a weekend after a match, like, just for a quick one with the lads. Plays for United.”

“Aye, so I’ve heard. Troublemaker?”

“No. Not at all. Not even much of a boozer. He’s usually gone early. It’s just…” Ted scratched his head again, sending more flakes of dandruff onto the polished bar. “There was a bit of a scuffle Saturday night, that’s all.”

“No punches?”

He shook his head. “Far as I can tell, the lad in the picture bumped into another lad and spilled some of his drink. The other lad said something and this one replied, like, and gave him a bit of a shove for good measure. That’s all that happened. Honest. Pushing and shoving. It were all over before it began. Nobody got beat up.”

“Could it have continued outside?”

“I suppose it could have. As I said, though, it seemed like summat and nowt to me.”

“This other lad, the one whose drink got spilled, did he have any mates with him?”

“There were three of them.”

Hatchley pointed to the sketch again. “Did you see this lad and his mate leave?”

“Aye. I remember them because I had to remind them more than once to drink up.”

“Were they drunk?”

“Mebbe. A bit. They weren’t arse over tit, if that’s what you mean. They could still walk in a straight line and speak without slurring. Like I said, I’d seen the one in the picture a few times before, and he weren’t much of a drinker. He might have had a jar more than usual, but who hasn’t had by closing time on a Saturday night?”

“And it wasn’t till after eleven o’clock that you got rid of them, right?”

“Aye. About quarter past. I know some places are a bit lax, but there’s no extension of drinking-up time in the Jubilee. The manager makes that clear.”

“What about the other three?”

“They’d gone by then.”

“Were they drunk, too?”

“No. At least they didn’t act it.”

“Anything else you can tell me about them?”

Ted looked away.

“Why do I get the impression you’re still holding something back, Ted?”

“I don’t know, do I?”

“I think you do. Is it drugs? Worried we’ll close the place down and you’ll lose your job?”

“No way. Look, like I said… I don’t want to cause any bother.”

“What makes you think you’d be causing bother by telling me the truth, Ted? All right. Let me guess. If it’s not drugs, then you’re probably frightened these three hooligans are going to come back and wreck your pub if they find out you ratted on them. Is that it?”

“Partly, I suppose. But they weren’t hooligans.”

“Oh? Who were they, then? Did you recognize them?”

“Aye. I recognized them. Two of them, anyroad.”

“Names?”

“I don’t know their names, but one of them’s that lad from the shop off Cardigan Road. You know, the one opposite the bottom of the Leaview Estate. And the other one’s dad owns that new restaurant in the market square. The Himalaya.”

Hatchley raised his eyebrows.

“See what I mean?” Ted went on. “See what I’m worried about, now? I don’t want to get stuck in the middle of some bloody racial incident, do I? The lad in your picture called one of them a ‘Paki bastard’ and told him to get out of the fucking way. That’s what happened.”

IV

Gallows View, déjà vu, Banks thought, as he pulled up outside the Mahmoods’ shop. Of course, the street had changed a lot in six years, and the wire mesh that covered the display windows was one of the changes. Inside, the smell of cumin and coriander was another.

The Mahmoods were one of three Asian families in East-vale. In these parts of Yorkshire north of Leeds and Bradford you saw very few visible minorities, even in the larger cities like York and Harrogate.

Mahmood had enlarged the shop, Banks noticed. Originally, it had occupied the ground floor of only one cottage, and the Sharps had used the other as their living room. But now the shop had been extended to take up the frontage of both cottages, complete with extra plateglass window and a new freezer section. The Mahmoods sold a whole range of products, from bread, eggs, cigarettes, milk and beer to washing-up liquid, tights, magazines, lipstick, stationery and toothpaste. They also rented out videos. Pretty soon, when the new estate was finished, the shop would be a little gold mine.

Unlike most people the racist bigots refer to as “Pakis,” Charles Mahmood actually did hail from Pakistan. Or rather, his father, Wasim Mahmood, did. Wasim and family emigrated to England in 1948, shortly after partition. Charles was born in Bradford in 1953, around the time of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, and he was, naturally, given the name of her only male child because the Mahmoods were proud of their new country and its royal heritage.

Unfortunately for Charles, when his own son was born in 1976, the Prince of Wales had yet to marry and produce offspring. To name his child, Charles had to take the devious route of stealing one of the prince’s middle names. He chose George. Why he didn’t choose Philip, which might have been easier on the lad at school, nobody knew. As for George himself, he said he was only glad his dad hadn’t called him Arthur, which would have seemed even more old-fashioned than George to his classmates.

Banks knew all this because George had been a contemporary of his own son, Brian, at Eastvale Comprehensive, and the two had become good friends during their last couple of years there. George had spent quite a bit of time at the Banks household, and Banks remembered his love of music, his instinctive curiosity about things and his sense of humor. They had all laughed at the story of the family names, for example.

Now the kids seemed to have lost touch, drifted apart as people do, and Banks hadn’t seen George for a while. Brian had just started his third year at college in Portsmouth, and George was still in Eastvale, pretty much unemployed, as far as Banks knew, apart from helping his dad out at the shop. Even though they hadn’t see one another in a while, Banks still felt a little uneasy about interviewing George in connection with a criminal matter.

Charles Mahmood greeted Banks with a smile of recognition; his wife, Shazia, waved from the other side of the shop, where she was stacking shelves with jars of instant coffee.

“Is it about that brick-chucking?” asked Charles in his broad West Yorkshire accent.

Banks told him it wasn’t, but assured him that the matter was still under investigation.

“What’s up, then?” Charles asked.

“George in?”

“George?” He flicked his head. “Upstairs. Why, what’s happened?” Banks didn’t think she could have heard, but Shazia Mahmood had stopped putting jars on shelves and seemed to be trying to eavesdrop.

“We don’t know yet,” Banks said. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’d just like to talk to him. Okay?”

Charles Mahmood shrugged. “Fine with me.”

“How’s he doing these days?”

Charles nodded toward the stairs. “You’d better ask him. See for yourself. He’s in his room.”

“Problems?”

“Not really. Just a phase he’s going through. Another seven-day wonder.”

Banks smiled, remembering the way his father used to say that about every hobby he took up, from Meccano to stamp collecting. He’d been right, too. Banks still felt that he lurched restlessly from interest to interest. “What particular phase is this one?” he asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“I’d better go talk to him, then,” said Banks. “The curiosity’s killing me.”

He walked upstairs, aware of Shazia Mahmood’s eyes drilling into his back, and didn’t realize until he got to the top that he didn’t know which room was George’s. But it didn’t matter by then. At the end of the hallway, beside the bathroom, a door stood slightly ajar, and from inside the room Banks could smell sandalwood incense and hear piano music.

It was jazz, certainly, but not Monk, Bill Evans or Bud Powell. No one like that. It didn’t even resemble the wild flights of Cecil Taylor, one of whose records Banks had made the mistake of buying years ago on the strength of a review from a usually reliable critic. This music was repetitive and rhythmic, a sort of catchy, jangling melodic riff played over and over again with very few changes. It was vaguely familiar.

He tapped on the door and George Mahmood opened it. George was a good-looking boy with thick black hair, long eyelashes and loam-brown eyes. He looked at Banks a moment, then said, “You’re Brian’s dad, aren’t you? The copper.”

It wasn’t exactly the warm welcome Banks had hoped for; he had thought George might have remembered him with more affection. Still, attitudes change a lot in three years, especially when you’re young. He smiled. “Right. That’s me. The copper. Mind if I come in?”

“Is this a social call?”

“Not exactly.”

“I didn’t think so.” George stood aside. “Better come in, anyway. I don’t suppose I could stop you even if I wanted.”

Banks entered the bedroom and sat on a hardback chair at the desk. George slouched in an armchair. But not before he had turned down the music a couple of notches. He was wearing baggy black trousers and a white top with a Nehru collar.

“Who is that playing?” Banks asked.

“Why?”

“I like it.”

“It’s Abdullah Ibrahim. He’s a South African pianist.”

Now that George mentioned the name, Banks realized he had heard of Ibrahim and his music before. “Didn’t he used to be called Dollar Brand?” he asked.

“That’s right. Just like Muhammed Ali used to be called Cassius Clay.”

Banks hadn’t heard of Cassius Clay in years, and he was surprised that someone as young as George had ever heard of Ali’s old name at all. They made a little uneasy small talk about Brian, then Banks got quickly to the point he had come for. “George,” he said, “I’ve come to ask you about Saturday night.”

“What about it?” George looked away toward the window. “And my name’s not George anymore. That’s a stupid name, just my father’s post-Colonial genuflection. My name’s Mohammed Mahmood.”

As he spoke, George turned to look at Banks again and his eyes shone with defiant pride. Now Banks saw what Charles Mahmood meant. Now it made sense: Dollar Brand/Abdullah Ibrahim, the Koran lying on the bedside table. George was exploring his Islamic roots.

Well, Banks told himself, be tolerant. Not all Muslims support death threats against writers. He didn’t know much about the religion, but he supposed there must be as many different forms of Islam as there are of Christianity, which runs a pretty broad spectrum if you include the Sandemanians, the Methodists, the Quakers and the Spanish Inquisition.

Why, then, did he feel so uncomfortable, as if he had lost someone he had known? Not a close friend, certainly, but a person he had liked and had shared things with. Now he was excluded – he could see it in George’s eyes – he was the enemy. There would be no more music, laughter or understanding. Ideology had come between them, and it would rewrite history and deny that the music, laughter and understanding had ever happened in the first place. Banks had been through it once before with an old school friend who had become a born-again Christian. They no longer spoke to one another. Or, more accurately, Banks no longer spoke to him.

“Okay, Mohammed,” he said, “did you go to the Jubilee with a couple of mates on Saturday night?”

“What if I did?”

“I thought Muslims weren’t supposed to drink?”

Banks could swear he saw George blush. “I don’t,” he answered. “Well, not much. I’m stopping.”

“Who were you with?”

“Why?”

“Is there any reason you don’t want to tell me?”

George shrugged. “No. It doesn’t matter. I was with Asim and Kobir.”

“Are they from around here?”

“Asim is. Asim Nazur. His dad owns the Himalaya. They live in the flat above it.”

“I know the place,” said Banks, who had eaten there on more than one occasion. He also knew that Asim Nazur’s father was some sort of bigwig in the Yorkshire Muslim community. “And the other lad?”

“Kobir. He’s Asim’s cousin from Bradford. He was just visiting, so we took him out to listen to some music, that’s all. Look, why are-”

“What time did you leave the pub?”

“I wasn’t looking at my watch.”

“Before closing time?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you go?”

“We bought some fish and chips at Sweaty Betty’s, just down Market Street, then we ate them in a shop doorway because it were pissing down. After that we went home. Why?”

“You went your separate ways?”

“Course we went separate ways. You’d have to do, wouldn’t you, if you lived in opposite directions?”

“Which way did you walk home?”

“Same way I always do from up there. Cut through the Carlaw Place ginnel over the rec.”

“What time would this be?”

“I’m not sure. Probably elevenish by then.”

“Not later?”

“No. A bit before, if anything. The pubs hadn’t come out.”

“Mum and Dad still up?”

“No, they were asleep when I got back. They close the shop at ten on a Saturday. They’d been up since before dawn.”

“Did you see anyone on your way?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Doesn’t it worry you, walking alone across the rec at night?”

“Not particularly. I can handle myself.”

“Against how many?”

“I’ve been taking lessons. Martial arts.”

“Since when?”

“Since some bastard chucked a brick through our window and cut me mum. They might accept what’s going on, but I won’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s going on’?”

There was scorn in his voice. “Racism. Pure and simple. We live in a racist society. It doesn’t matter that I was born here, and my mum and dad before me, it’s the color of your skin people judge you on.”

“Not everyone.”

“Shows how much you know. The police are part of it, anyway.”

“Geor – - sorry, Mohammed, I didn’t come here to argue the politics of racism with you. I came to find out about your movements on Saturday.”

“So what’s happened? Why are you picking on me?”

“I understand there was an altercation in the Jubilee?”

“Altercation?”

“Yes. A disagreement.”

“I know what it means. I’m not some ignorant wog just got off the boat, you know. I’m trying to remember. Do you mean that stupid pillock who bumped into me and called me a Paki bastard?”

“That’s right.”

“So what?”

“What do you mean, ‘So what?’ You’re telling me you just let it go at that? You? With all your martial-arts training?”

George puffed up his chest. “Well, I was all for doing the pair of them over, but Asim and Kobir didn’t want any trouble.”

“So you just let it go by, a racial slur like that?”

“When you look like I do, you get used to it.”

“But you were angry?”

George leaned forward and rested his palms on his knees. “Of course I were bloody angry. Every time you hear something like that said about you, you just get filled with anger and indignation. You feel dehumanized.” He shrugged. “It’s not something you’d understand.”

“Because I’m white?”

George slumped back in his chair. “You said it.”

“But you listened to your friends this time?”

“Yes. Besides, we were in a crowded pub. Just about everyone else in the place was white, apart from a couple of Rastas selling drugs. And the last thing those bastards would do was come to our aid if anything happened. They’d probably join in with the whiteys.”

“What made you think they were selling drugs?”

“That’s what they do, isn’t it?”

Talk about racism, Banks thought. He moved on. “Did you know the lad who insulted you?”

“I’ve seen him around once or twice. Arrogant-looking pillock, always looked down his nose at me. Lives on the Leaview Estate, I think. Why? You going to arrest him for racism?”

“Not exactly,” said Banks. “He’s dead.”

George’s jaw dropped. “He’s wha-?”

“He’s dead, Mohammed. His name was Jason Fox. Someone unknown, or several someones unknown, kicked seven shades of shit out of him in the Carlaw Place ginnel sometime after eleven o’clock last night.”

“Well, it wasn’t me.”

“Are you sure? Are you sure you weren’t so upset by what Jason called you that you and your friends waited in the ginnel? You just admitted you knew Jason lived on the Leaview Estate, so it would be a pretty good guess that he’d take the same short cut home as you, wouldn’t it? You waited there, the three of you, and when Jason came along, you gave him what-for. I’m not saying you intended to kill him, just teach him a lesson. But he is dead, George, and there’s no remedy for that.”

George looked so stunned he didn’t even bother to correct Banks over his name. “I’m not saying owt more,” he said. “I want a solicitor. This is a fit-up.”

“Come on, George. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Like hell it doesn’t. If you’re accusing me and my mates of killing someone, then you’d better arrest us. And get us a lawyer. And I told you, my name’s Mohammed, not George.”

“Look, Mohammed, if I do what you’re asking, I’ll have to take you down to the station. And your mates.”

George stood up. “Do it then. I’m not afraid. If you think I’m a killer you’d be taking me anyway, wouldn’t you?”

Oh, bloody hell, Banks thought. He didn’t want to do this, but the silly bugger had left him no choice. He stood up. “Come on, then,” he said. “And we’d better take the shoes and clothes you wore last night along with us too.”