Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was)

Chapter 8

When Banks arrived at Thorpe Wood the following morning and asked to see Detective Inspector Hart, he was surprised when a man came down to greet him. The telephone call that his mother had told him about when he got back from the pub had been from Michelle.

“Mr. Banks, or should I say DCI Banks? Come with me, please, if you would.” He stood aside and gestured for Banks to enter.

“And you are?”

“Detective Superintendent Shaw. We’ll talk in my office.”

Shaw looked familiar, but Banks couldn’t place him. It was possible they had met on a course, or even on a case, years ago, and he had forgotten, but he usually had a good memory for faces.

They didn’t speak on their way to Shaw’s office, and as soon as they got there Shaw disappeared, saying he’d be back in a couple of minutes. Old copper’s trick, Banks knew. And Shaw knew he knew.

There wasn’t likely to be anything of interest in the office if Shaw was willing to leave Banks there alone, but he had a poke around nonetheless. Second nature. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but just looking for the sake of it. The filing cabinets were locked, as were the desk drawers, and the computer required a password. It began to seem very much as if Shaw expected Banks to nose about.

There was an interesting framed photograph on the wall, quite a few years old by the look of it, showing a younger Shaw and Jet Harris standing by an unmarked Rover looking for all the world like John Thaw and Dennis Waterman in The Sweeney. Or was it Morse and Lewis? Is that how Shaw saw himself, as Sergeant Lewis to Harris’s Chief Inspector Morse?

The bookcase held mostly binders and back issues of the Police Review. Mixed in were a few legal texts and an American textbook called Practical Homicide Investigation. Banks was browsing through this and trying not to look at the gruesome color illustrations when, after half an hour, Shaw came back, followed by a rather embarrassed-looking DI Michelle Hart.

“Sorry about that,” said Shaw, sitting down opposite Banks. “Something came up. You know how it is.” Michelle sat to one side looking uncomfortable.

“I know.” Banks put the book aside and reached for a cigarette.

“There’s no smoking in here,” said Shaw. “Not anywhere in the building, not for any of us, these days. Maybe you’re still a bit behind the times back up in Yorkshire?”

Banks had known that he probably couldn’t smoke, though Shaw had the nicotine-stained fingers of a heavy smoker, but he thought it at least worth a try. Obviously, though, this was going to be played the hard way, even though they had done him the courtesy of conducting the interview in the superintendent’s office rather than in a dingy interview room. He didn’t feel nervous, just puzzled and pissed off. What was going on?

“So, what can I do for you, Superintendent Shaw?”

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

Shaw stared at Banks, and Banks searched through his store of faces for a match. The ginger hair was thin on top, one long side strand combed over to hide the bald patch, but not fooling anyone; hardly any eyebrows; freckles, pale blue eyes, the face filled out and jowly; the fleshy, red-veined nose of a seasoned drinker. He was familiar, but there was something different about him. Then Banks knew.

“You’ve had your ears fixed,” he said. “The wonders of modern medicine.”

Shaw reddened. “So you do remember me.”

“You were the baby DC who came to our house after Graham disappeared.” It was hard to believe, but Shaw would have been about twenty-one at the time, only seven years older than Banks, yet he had seemed an adult, someone from another world.

“Tell me,” said Shaw, leaning forward across the table so Banks could smell the minty breath of a man who drinks his breakfast. “I’ve always wondered. Did you ever get your budgie back?”

Banks leaned back in his chair. “Well, now we’ve got all the pleasantries out of the way, why don’t we get on with it?”

Shaw jerked his head at Michelle, who slid a photograph across the desk to Banks. She looked serious with her reading glasses on. Sexy, too, Banks thought. “Is this the man?” she asked.

Banks stared at the black-and-white photo and felt a rush of blood to his brain, ears buzzing and vision clouding. It all flooded back, those few moments of claustrophobia and terror in the stranger’s grip, the moments he had thought were his last.

“Are you all right?”

It was Michelle who spoke, a concerned look on her face.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You look pale. Would you like a drink of water?”

“No, thank you,” said Banks. “It’s him.”

“Are you certain?”

“After all this time I can’t be a hundred percent positive, but I’m as certain as I’ll ever be.”

Shaw nodded, and Michelle took the picture back.

“Why?” Banks asked, looking from one to the other. “What is it?”

“James Francis McCallum,” Michelle said. “He went missing from a mental institution near Wisbech on Thursday, June seventeenth, 1965.”

“That would be about right,” said Banks.

“McCallum hadn’t been involved in any violent activity, but the doctors told us that the possibility always existed, and that he might be dangerous.”

“When was he caught?” Banks asked.

Michelle glanced at Shaw before answering. He gave her a curt nod. “That’s just it,” she went on. “He wasn’t. McCallum’s body was fished out of the River Nene near Oundle on the first of July.”

Banks felt his mouth open and shut without any sound coming out. “Dead?” he managed.

“Dead,” echoed Shaw. He tapped his pen on the desk. “Nearly two months before your friend disappeared. So you see, DCI Banks, you’ve been laboring under an illusion for all these years. Now, what I’m really interested in is why you lied to me and DI Proctor in the first place.”

Banks felt numb from the shock he had just received. Dead. All these years. The guilt. And all for nothing. The man who assaulted him on the riverbank couldn’t have abducted and killed Graham. He should have felt relieved, but he only felt confused. “I didn’t lie,” he muttered.

“Call it a sin of omission, then. You didn’t tell us about McCallum.”

“Doesn’t seem as if it would have mattered, does it?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Look, I was just a kid. I hadn’t told my parents because I was scared how they’d react. I was upset and ashamed by what happened. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know, but that’s how I felt. Dirty and ashamed, as if it was somehow my fault for inviting it.”

“You should have told us. It could have been a lead.”

Banks knew that Shaw was right; he had told reluctant witnesses the same thing himself, time after time. “Well, I didn’t, and it wasn’t,” he snapped. “I’m sorry. Okay?”

But Shaw wasn’t going to be so easily put off, Banks could tell. He was enjoying himself, throwing his weight around. It was the bully mentality. To him, Banks was still the fourteen-year-old kid whose budgie had just flown out the door. “What really happened to your friend?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

Shaw scratched his chin. “I remember thinking at the time that you knew something, that you were holding something back. I’d like to have taken you to the station, had you down in the cells for an hour or so, but you were a minor, and my senior officer Reg Proctor was a bit of a softie, when it came right down to it. What really happened?”

“I don’t know. Graham just disappeared.”

“Are you sure you and your mates didn’t set on him? Maybe it was an accident, things just went too far?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m suggesting that maybe the three of you ganged up on Graham Marshall for some reason and killed him. These things happen. Then you had to get rid of the body.”

Banks folded his arms. “And tell me how we did that.”

“I don’t know,” Shaw admitted. “But I don’t have to. Maybe you stole a car.”

“None of us could drive.”

“So you say.”

“It wasn’t the way it is today, with ten-year-olds behind the wheel.”

“Is that how it happened? A fight broke out and Graham got killed? Maybe fell and smashed his skull, or broke his neck? I’m not saying you intended to kill him, but it happened, didn’t it? Why don’t you come clean with me, Banks? It’ll do you good to get it off your chest after all these years.”

“Sir?”

“Shut up, DI Hart. Well, Banks? I’m waiting.”

Banks stood up. “You’ll have a bloody long wait, then. Good-bye.” He walked toward the door. Shaw didn’t try to stop him. Just as Banks had turned the handle, he heard the superintendent speak again and turned to face him. Shaw was grinning. “Only teasing, Banks,” he said. Then his expression became serious. “My, but you’re sensitive. The point I want to make is that you’re on my turf, and it turns out you can’t help us any more now than you could all those years ago. So my advice to you, laddie, is to bugger off back up to Yorkshire, go shag a sheep or two, and forget about Graham Marshall. Leave it to the pros.”

“Bloody good job the pros did last time,” said Banks, leaving and slamming the door behind him, annoyed at himself for losing his temper, but unable to prevent it. Outside the station, he kicked a tire, lit a cigarette and got in his car. Maybe Shaw was right and he should just head back up north. He still had over a week’s holiday left and plenty to do around the cottage, whereas there was nothing more he could do down here. Before driving off, he sat for a moment trying to digest what Michelle and Shaw had told him. His guilt over the years had been misplaced, then; McCallum was in no way responsible for Graham’s abduction and, by extension, neither was Banks. On the other hand, if he had reported the incident, there was a chance that McCallum might have been apprehended and hospitalized instead of drowning. More guilt, then?

Banks cast his mind back to that hot June afternoon by the river and asked himself if McCallum would have killed him. The answer, he decided, was yes. So sod the bastard, and sod guilt. McCallum was a dangerous loony and it wasn’t Banks’s fault he’d fallen in the fucking river and drowned. Good riddance.

Turning up the volume on Cream’s “Crossroads,” he sped out of the police car park, daring one of the patrol cars to chase him. Nobody did.

They all looked tired, Annie thought, as the Armitage team gathered in the boardroom of Western Area Headquarters late that morning. The boardroom was so called because of its long polished table, high-backed chairs and paintings of nineteenth-century cotton magnates on the walls, red-faced, eyes popping, probably because of the tight collars they were wearing, Annie thought. As works of art, the paintings were negligible, if not execrable, but they lent authority to the room.

Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe sat at the head of the table and poured himself a glass of water. Also present were DCs Templeton, Rickerd and Jackman, and Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley, still clearly uneasy with Annie’s promotion over him. But as Banks had told Annie more than once, Jim Hatchley was born to be a sergeant, and a damn good one, too. There wasn’t much Hatchley didn’t know about the shady side of Eastvale. He had a network of informers second only to his network of pub managers and landlords, who all kept an eye on criminal comings and goings for him, and his tiredness was probably due to the fact that his wife had just given birth to their second child a couple of weeks ago. It was the three DCs who had borne the brunt of the previous night’s surveillance.

“So we’re not much further ahead,” Gristhorpe opened.

“No, sir,” said Annie, who at least had managed her quick pint in Relton, then gone home for a bath and a few hours’ sleep before arriving back at the station shortly after dawn. “Except we’ve checked with the phone company and got Luke’s records. We’ll be tracking down all the people he phoned over the last month, though there aren’t many. The ransom call to Martin Armitage was the only call made after Luke’s disappearance, the only call made that day, and it was local. Wherever Luke is, he’s not far away, or he wasn’t on Tuesday evening.”

“Anything else?”

“We’ve got a fair idea of Luke’s movements until five-thirty the day he disappeared.”

“Go ahead.”

Annie walked over to the whiteboard and listed the times and places as she mentioned them. She knew the details by heart and didn’t need to consult her notebook. “He arrived at the bus station by the Swainsdale Centre at a quarter to three. The bus driver and several of the passengers remember him. We’ve been looking at some of the closed-circuit TV footage, and he walked around the center for a while, went into W.H. Smith’s, then into HMV, but he didn’t appear to buy anything. That takes us up until half past three. He appeared in that small computer shop on North Market Street at a quarter to four, which is about right, as he was on foot. He stayed there half an hour, trying out some games, then he visited the music shop at the corner of York Road and Barton Place.”

“Did anyone notice anything unusual about his state of mind?” Gristhorpe asked.

“No. Everyone said he just seemed normal. Which, I guess, was pretty weird to start with. I mean, he wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs.”

“And next?”

“The used-book shop on the market square.” Annie walked over to the window and pointed. “That one down there. Norman’s.”

“I know it,” said Gristhorpe. “What did he buy?”

“Crime and Punishment and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Right up Gristhorpe’s alley, Annie thought.

Gristhorpe whistled. “Pretty heavy going for a fifteen-year-old. What next?”

“That was it. He walked out of the market square CCTV range at half past five, and we haven’t found anyone who admits to seeing him since. Oh, and he was also seen talking to a group of lads in the square after coming out of the bookshop. It looked as if they were ragging him. One of them took the parcel of books from his hand and they tossed it around to one another while he flailed around trying to get it back.”

“What happened in the end?”

“One of them threw it to him and they went off laughing.”

“Classmates?”

“Yes. We’ve had a chat with them. At least DC Templeton has.”

“Nothing there, sir,” said Templeton. “They’ve all got alibis.”

“Which direction did he walk off in?” Gristhorpe asked.

“Down Market Street. South.”

Gristhorpe scratched his chin and frowned. “What do you make of it all, Annie?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir. He’s been gone three nights now and nobody’s seen hide nor hair.”

“What about the Armitages?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure they’re telling you the truth?”

“They’ve no reason to lie now,” Annie said. “And the kidnapper knows we’re treating Luke as a misper. Remember, it was him who suggested that the Armitages get Luke to back up their story.”

“Too late for that, now, isn’t it?” said DC Kevin Templeton. “I mean, wasn’t he supposed to come home yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“So what happened?” Gristhorpe asked.

“He’s probably dead, sir,” cut in DC Winsome Jackman.

“But why hasn’t the kidnapper gone for the money?”

“Because he knows we’re watching,” Annie answered. “It’s the only explanation. He must have seen me when I went up to the shelter to check the briefcase.”

Nobody said anything; there was nothing they could say. Annie knew they agreed with her and could all sense what she was feeling herself, that gut-wrenching fear that she might be responsible for the boy’s death, that if she had stuck to rules and procedure, then things might have gone according to plan. To give him his due, though, whatever he thought, Gristhorpe didn’t say anything.

“Unless…” Annie went on.

“Aye, lass?”

“Well, a couple of things have puzzled me about all this right from the start.”

“I agree that as kidnappings go, it’s hardly conventional,” said Gristhorpe, “but go on.”

Annie took a sip of water. “In the first place,” she said, “why did the kidnapper wait so long before getting in touch with the Armitages and making his demand? Luke disappeared sometime late Monday afternoon or evening, according to what we’ve managed to find out so far, yet the demand didn’t come until after dark on Tuesday.”

“Maybe the kidnapper didn’t get hold of him until Tuesday,” DC Templeton suggested.

“You mean he really did run away and just happened to get picked up by a kidnapper before he could go back?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Too much of a coincidence, I’d say.”

“Coincidences do happen.”

“Sometimes, maybe.”

“Or the kidnapper might have been keeping an eye on Luke for a while, watching his movements, biding his time.”

“I’ll grant you that’s more likely,” said Gristhorpe. “Annie?”

“It still doesn’t explain the time delay between Luke’s not turning up at home Monday night and the ransom demand on Tuesday evening, sir. These people don’t usually like to waste time. If they snatched him on Monday, then they’d have rung the Armitages on Monday. Besides, that’s only the first thing that bothered me.”

“What’s next?” Gristhorpe asked.

“Well, Martin Armitage told me that when he asked to speak to Luke, the kidnapper wouldn’t let him, said Luke was somewhere else.”

“So?” said DC Templeton. “That’s perfectly likely, isn’t it?”

“But he was calling from Luke’s mobile,” Annie pointed out.

“I still don’t see your point,” said Templeton. “Mobiles are mobile. You can take them anywhere. That’s what they’re for.”

Annie sighed. “Think about it, Kev. If Luke’s being kept somewhere where there isn’t a phone, then the kidnapper might have to go to a phone box, and he’d be unlikely to take Luke with him. But the kidnapper was using Luke’s mobile, so why isn’t he with Luke?”

“Could be where they’re keeping the lad is out of cell range,” suggested DC Rickerd.

“Possible,” Annie agreed, remembering her time out of range. “But isn’t it usual for kidnappers to let the people they want the money from speak to their loved ones? Isn’t it an incentive to pay? Proof of life?”

“Good point, Annie,” said Gristhorpe. “So we’ve got two unusual variations on the formula. First, the time delay, and second, no proof of life. Anything else?”

“Yes,” said Annie. “The ransom demand.”

“What about it?” asked Gristhorpe.

“It’s nowhere near enough.”

“But the Armitages aren’t as rich as people think they are,” argued Templeton.

“My point exactly, Kev. So they’re struggling to maintain Swainsdale Hall and whatever lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to. We know that now, since I talked to them, but it wasn’t common knowledge. As police, we’re privy to a lot of inside information. It’s our lifeblood. But if you kidnapped the son of a famous ex-model and a famous ex-footballer, living in a place like Swainsdale Hall, how much would you think they were worth? How much would you ask them for the life of their son? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? Fifty? I’d go to a hundred, myself, or maybe a quarter of a million. Let them negotiate down a few thousand from there. I certainly wouldn’t start at ten.”

“So maybe the kidnapper knew they were on their uppers?” Templeton suggested. “Maybe it’s someone who knows the family?”

“Then why kidnap Luke at all? Why not go for someone who had more money?”

“Maybe that’s all they needed. Maybe it’s enough.”

“You’re clutching at straws, Kev.”

Templeton smiled. “Just playing devil’s advocate, ma’m, that’s all. But if you’re right, then perhaps they don’t have quite the intelligence we’re crediting them with.”

“Okay. Point taken.” Annie looked at Gristhorpe. “But don’t you think it’s all a bit puzzling when you add it up, sir?”

Gristhorpe paused and made a steeple of his thick fingers on the desk before answering. “I do,” he said. “I can’t say I’ve had to deal with many kidnappings over the course of my career – and for that I thank the Lord, because it’s a cowardly crime – but I’ve dealt with a few, and none of them have been as riddled with anomalies as this one. What are your conclusions, Annie?”

“Either it’s an amateur job,” Annie answered. “Very amateur, like some junkie who saw the chance to get enough money for his next few fixes and now he’s too scared to go through with it.”

“Or?”

“Or it’s something else entirely. A setup, a diversion, the ransom demand merely to deflect us, confuse us, and something else is going on.”

“Like what?” Gristhorpe asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” Annie answered. “All I know is that in either scenario the outcome looks bad for Luke.”

It wasn’t fair, thought Andrew Naylor, the man from the Ministry, as he drove his government Range Rover over the disinfectant pad at the entrance to the unfenced road above Gratly. He had nothing to do with foot-and-mouth control, yet in the eyes of the locals, all government employees were tarred with the same brush. Everyone knew him in the area, and before the outbreak no one had paid him much mind. Now, though, he was getting sick of the resentful looks he got when he walked into a shop or a pub, the way conversations stopped and whispers began, and the way people sometimes even expressed their anger to his face. In one pub, they had been so hostile toward him he thought they were going to beat him up.

It didn’t do the slightest bit of good to tell them that he worked for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA, in the Water and Land Directorate, and that his job was water, because that only made them think of Yorkshire Water – of droughts, leakages, shortages and restrictions on washing their bloody cars and watering their lawns – and then they got even angrier.

It was part of Andrew’s job to collect water samples from local lakes, ponds, tarns and reservoirs, and these were later tested for contaminants at the Central Science Laboratory. Because some of these bodies of water were surrounded by open country, Andrew was one of the few with a special dispensation to visit them, after taking all the proper precautions, of course.

That day, his last call was Hallam Tarn, a godforsaken, hollowed-out bowl of water on the very top of the moor, beyond Tetchley Fell. Legend had it that the place used to be a village once, but the villagers took to Satanic practices, so God smote them with his fist and the tarn was created in place of the village. It was said that on certain days of the year you could see the old houses and streets beneath the water’s surface and hear the cries of the villagers. Sometimes, when the light was right and the curlew’s cry piped across the desolate moor, Andrew could almost believe it.

Today, though, the sun was shining, and the honeyed air was still and sweet. Summer seemed to have arrived at last, and Andrew couldn’t imagine any hint of evil taking place.

The deepest part of the tarn ran closest to the road, and a tall, solid drystone wall separated it from children and drunks and anyone else foolish enough to wander around up there in the dark. To get access to the water, you had to drive a few yards farther on, cross the stile and take a footpath that led to its shallow shore. In the days before the government restrictions, it had been a popular spot for ramblers and picnickers, but these days it was off-limits, except to people such as Andrew. A government poster nailed to the stile warned people to stay out on penalty of a steep fine.

Before heading out with his dinghy and his sample jar, Andrew sprayed his Wellington boots with disinfectant and donned his plastic outerwear. He felt like a spaceman preparing for a walk on the moon. He also felt hot inside the protective clothing, and all he wanted to do was get this over with as soon as possible, then head home for a nice long bath and an evening out in Northallerton with Nancy, maybe the pictures, a spot of dinner and a drink after.

Feeling the sweat drip down the back of his neck, he walked along the narrow dirt path the hundred yards or so to the edge of the tarn and squatted by the waterside to fill his sample jar. It was so quiet up there, he could imagine himself the only man left in the world. Because he had to take samples from various depths, he got in the small dinghy and began to row. The tarn wasn’t much bigger than a large pond, maybe a couple of hundred yards long and a hundred wide, but it was quite deep in places. Andrew felt a little disquiet at being out there all alone, not another soul in sight, and whenever he looked down into the water he fancied he could see a roof or a street below. It was an optical illusion, of course, most likely caused by the sun on the water, but it unnerved him nonetheless.

When he neared the wall, he noticed some dark material snagged on the roots of an old tree. The tree was gone, but gnarled roots still jutted out of the bank like arms reaching out of a grave, and there was something about their arched, sinewy shapes that upset Andrew even more. Curious about the material, however, he put his fears aside and rowed closer. Legends and myths couldn’t harm him.

When he got near enough, he stretched out his arm and tried to free the material from the root. It was heavier than he thought, and as it jerked free, the dinghy tipped and Andrew, off-balance, fell into the tarn. He was a strong swimmer, so drowning didn’t worry him, but what chilled his blood was that the thing he was holding tightly as a lover in a slow dance was a dead body, and from its ashen face, open dead eyes looked directly into his.

Andrew let go of the burden, mouth full of bile. He struggled back into the dinghy, salvaged his oars and rowed back to shore, where he stopped only long enough to be sick, before squelching back to his van, hoping to God his mobile worked up there. It didn’t. Cursing, he threw it on the floor and started the van with shaking hands. As he drove back toward Helmthorpe, he glanced frequently in his rearview mirror to make sure that no misshapen, supernatural beasts from the depths of the tarn were following him.

Banks still felt angry when he pulled up outside his parents’ house, brakes squealing, but before he went inside he took several deep breaths, determined not to let it show. His parents didn’t need it; they had problems enough of their own. He found his father in front of the television watching horse racing and his mother in the kitchen fussing over a cake.

“I’m heading home this afternoon,” he said, popping his head around the kitchen door. “Thanks for letting me stay.”

“There’s always a bed for you here,” his mother said. “You know that, son. Have you finished what you came for?”

“Not really,” said Banks, “but there’s not a lot more I can do.”

“You’re a policeman. Surely you can do something to help?”

The ways Banks’s mother said “policeman” wasn’t quite as vehement as the way his father said it, nor was it as tinged with distaste as the way she used to say it, but it wasn’t far off, which was why it had surprised Banks when Mrs. Marshall told him his mother was proud of him. Banks’s mother had always made it clear that she thought he had sold himself short, that he should have gone into commerce and worked himself up to be managing director of some big international company. It didn’t seem to matter how well he did in his job, or how often he was promoted; to his mother, his career choice was undignified, and his achievements always seemed to pale beside those of his stockbroker brother, Roy. Banks had always suspected that Roy was a bit of a shady dealer, a frequent enough occurrence in the world of financial speculation, in his experience, though he would never voice such suspicions to his mother, or indeed to Roy himself. Still, he lived in dread of that telephone call coming from his brother one day: “Alan, can you help me? I’m in a bit of a fix with the law.”

“It’s not my case, Mum,” he said. “The locals are good. They’ll do the best they can.”

“Will you have something to eat with us before you go?”

“Of course. Know what I’d like?”

“What?”

“Fish and chips from over the road,” said Banks. “I’ll get them. My treat.”

“Well, maybe I’ll have a fish cake,” said his mother. “Your dad hasn’t eaten from there since it went Chinese, though.”

“Go on, Dad,” said Banks, turning to the living room. “Or maybe you should stick to your low-fat diet?”

“Bugger low fat,” said Arthur Banks. “I’ll have the special and chips. Just make sure there’s no bloody chop suey or sweet and sour sauce gone anywhere near it.” Banks winked at his mother and walked over to the shop.

The strip of shops across the main road, set back by a stretch of tarmac for customer parking, had gone through dozens of changes over the years. When Banks first moved to the estate, he remembered, there had been the fish and chips shop, a ladies’ hairdresser, a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s and a launderette. Now there was a video-rental shop, a take-away pizza and tandoori place called Caesar’s Taj Mahal, a minimart and a unisex hair salon. The only constants were the fish and chips shop, which now also sold take-away Chinese food, and the newsagent’s, which, according to the signs, was still run by the Walkers, who had taken over from Donald Bradford all those years ago, in 1966. Banks wondered what had become of Bradford. He was said to have been devastated over what had happened to Graham. Had the local police ever followed up on him?

Banks waited to cross the busy road. To the left of the shops stood the remains of the old ball-bearing factory, still untouched for some reason. It could hardly be for historical preservation, as it was a real eyesore. The gates were chained and padlocked shut, and it was surrounded by high wire-mesh fencing with barbed wire on top, the windows beyond covered by rusty grilles. Despite these security precautions, most of the windows were broken anyway, and the front of the blackened brick building was covered in colorful graffiti. Banks remembered when the place was in full production, lorries coming and going, the factory whistle blowing and crowds of workers waiting at the bus stop. A lot of them were young women, or girls scarcely out of school – a rough lot, his mother called them – and Banks often used to time his visits to the shops to coincide with the factory gates opening because he lusted after some of the girls.

There was one girl in particular, he remembered, who used to stand at the bus stop smoking, a faraway look in her eyes, scarf done up like a turban on her head. Even her serviceable work clothes couldn’t disguise the curves, and she had pale smooth skin and looked a bit like Julie Christie in Billy Liar. When Banks used to walk as casually as possible past the bus stop, he remembered as he stood in the fish and chips shop queue, the other girls used to tease him with lewd comments and make him blush.

“Hey, Mandy,” one of them would call out. “Here comes that lad again. I think he fancies you.”

They would all howl with laughter, Mandy would tell them to shut up and Banks would blush. Once, Mandy tousled his hair and gave him a cigarette. He smoked it over a week, taking a few drags at a time, then nicking it to save for later. In the end it tasted like something he might have picked up from the gutter, but he finished it anyway. After that, Mandy would sometimes smile when he passed by. She had a nice smile. Sometimes strands of hair escaped from under her turban and curled over her cheek, and other times she might have a smudge of oil or dirt on her face. She must have been about eighteen. Four years age difference. Far from an impossible gap when you get older, but wider than the Grand Canyon at that age.

Then, one day, he noticed that she had started wearing an engagement ring, and a few weeks later she no longer stood at the bus stop with the others, and he never saw her again.

Where was Mandy now? he wondered. She’d be in her fifties if she was still alive, older than Kay Summerville. Had she put on a lot of weight? Had her hair turned gray? Did she look old and worn after years of struggle and poverty? Had she stayed married to the same man? Had she won the lottery and gone to live on the Costa del Sol? Did she ever think of that lovestruck adolescent who used to time his visits to the shops so he could see her waiting at the bus stop? He doubted it very much. The lives we leave behind. So many people. Our paths cross for a while, even as fleetingly as his had crossed Mandy’s, and we move on. Some encounters are impressed indelibly in our memories; others slip away into the void. Of course Mandy never thought of him; he was a mere passing amusement to her, whereas she fed deeper into his adolescent dreams of sex, and in his memory she would always be standing there with her hip against the bus stop, smoking with a faraway look in her eyes, a loose lock of hair resting softly against her pale cheek, always beautiful and always eighteen.

“Two specials and chips and one fish cake.”

Banks paid for the fish and chips and set off back home carrying the paper bag. No newspaper-wrapped fish and chips anymore. Dirty. Not healthy.

“There was a telephone call for you while you were out, Alan,” his mother said when he got back.

“Who was it?”

“Same woman as called last night. Have you got a new girlfriend already?”

Already. Sandra had been gone nearly two years, was pregnant with another man’s child and about to marry him. Had Banks got a new girlfriend already?

“No, Mum,” he said. “It’s one of the local coppers. You already know that from last night. They let women on the force these days.”

“No need to be cheeky. Eat your fish and chips before they go cold.”

“What did she say?”

“To ring her back when you had a moment. I wrote down the number just in case you’d forgotten it.”

Banks’s mother rolled her eyes when he left the table and headed toward the telephone. His father didn’t notice; he had his fish and chips on the paper on his lap and was eating them with his fingers, engrossed in the one-thirty from Newmarket, glass of beer balanced precariously on the arm of the chair.

The number scribbled on the pad by the hall telephone wasn’t familiar. It certainly wasn’t Thorpe Wood. Curious, Banks dialed.

“DI Hart here. Who’s speaking?”

“Michelle? It’s me. Alan Banks.”

“Ah, DCI Banks.”

“You left a message for me to call. Is this your mobile number?”

“That’s right. Look, first off, I’m sorry about Detective Superintendent Shaw this morning.”

“That’s all right. Not your fault.”

“I just felt… well, anyway, I’m surprised he’s taking such an interest. It’s not even his case. I had him marked down as just putting in time till his retirement; now he’s all over me like a dirty shirt.”

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Are you going home?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. This afternoon. This evening. No point hanging around where I’m not wanted.”

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. It doesn’t suit you. Only I was wondering if you’d like to meet up for a chat before you go, if you’re not in a hurry?”

“Any particular reason?”

“Perhaps because I didn’t treat you like an undesirable alien, despite your less than polite introduction.”

“Yes, okay. Why not?”

“Shall we say half past five in Starbucks, Cathedral Square?”

“There’s a Starbucks? In Peterborough?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. We’re very with-it these days. There’s a McDonald’s, too, if you’d prefer?”

“No. Starbucks will do fine. Half-five it is. That’ll give me plenty of time to pack and say my good-byes. See you there.”

Annie and Gristhorpe arrived at Hallam Tarn in time to see two police frogmen haul up the body and pull it back to shore with them. Peter Darby, crime scene photographer, sat in a dinghy nearby and videotaped everything. He had already taken several stills and Polaroids of the spot where the body had been first seen by Andrew Naylor. One of the lads at Helmthorpe had found a dry set of clothes for Naylor, and he stood with the small group, chewing his fingernails as the frogmen edged closer to shore.

Once on shore, they laid the body on the grass at the feet of Dr. Burns, the police surgeon. Dr. Glendenning, the Home Office pathologist, was unavailable that day, as he had been called in to help a colleague with a difficult case in Scarborough. Detective Sergeant Stefan Nowak, crime scene coordinator, and his scene-of-crime officers were on their way.

Well, Annie thought with some relief, at least it wasn’t a floater. She had been at the scene of more than one bloated, misshapen lump pulled from the water, and she didn’t relish another. But when she saw the face, she would gladly have accepted an anonymous floater any day. The body was Luke Armitage’s. No doubt about it. He was wearing the black T-shirt and jeans that Robin said he had on when he went to Eastvale, and he hadn’t been in the water long enough for his features to become unrecognizable, though the skin was white and there were signs of cutis anserina, more commonly known as gooseflesh. The once dark curls were straight now and stuck to his head and face like seaweed.

Annie stood aside and let Dr. Burns perform his in situ examination. “This is going to be difficult,” he told Annie. “In general, bodies decompose twice as fast in air as in water, but there are so many variables to take into account.”

“Any chance he drowned?”

The doctor examined Luke’s mouth for signs of foam and his eyes for the telltale petechial hemorrhages associated with asphyxia, of which drowning is a form. He shook his head and turned back to Annie. “Hard to be certain. We’ll have a better idea when Dr. Glendenning checks the lungs and runs a diatomic analysis.”

Diatoms, Annie knew from her basic courses in forensic science, were microorganisms that lived in the water. If you drowned, you breathed in a lot of them with the water and they spread to every nook and cranny of your body, even your bone marrow; if you hadn’t drowned but were found dead in water, then a few diatoms might be found, but they would be nowhere near as abundant or widely spread.

Dr. Burns turned the body over and pointed to the back of Luke’s head. Annie could see the signs of a blow. “Would that have been enough to cause death?” she asked.

“Hard blow to the cerebellum?” said Dr. Burns. “Certainly.” He began to examine the body in more detail. “He’s cold,” he said, “and there’s no rigor.”

“What does that tell you?”

“Usually a body is cold after eight to ten hours in the water. I’ll have to take his temperature to substantiate this, of course, and we’ll need to know the temperature of the water, too. As for the rigor, given the obvious effects of water on his skin, it must have come and gone.”

“How long does that take?”

“In water? Anything from two to four days.”

“Not sooner?”

“Not usually, no. Again, though, I’ll have to make some temperature checks. It might be summer but we’ve hardly been enjoying seasonal temperatures of late.”

Two days, Annie thought. It was Thursday afternoon now, and the ransom demand had come two days ago, on Tuesday evening. Was Luke already dead by then? If so, his death had nothing to do with her rash actions. She began to feel a glimmer of hope. If that was the case, then the kidnapper was trying to cash in on Luke’s death, which could have come about for other reasons. Curious. She would have to begin casting about for a motive now.

The sound of an approaching van interrupted Annie’s stream of thought, and she looked across to the wall to see DS Nowak and his SOCO team jumping the stile one after another, looking like sheep in their white protective clothing. Well, she thought, maybe the experts would be able to tell her a bit more.

Banks arrived half an hour early for his meeting with Michelle, parked in the short stay round the back of the town hall and cut through the arcade to Bridge Street, where he nipped into Waterstone’s and bought a book called The Profession of Violence, the story of the Kray twins. As he walked up the busy street toward the square, he marveled at how much the city center had changed since his day. For a start, it was all pedestrian precinct now, not busy roads the way it had been when he lived there. And it seemed cleaner, the buildings less shabby and grime-coated. It was a sunny afternoon, and tourists wandered in and out of the cathedral grounds into the square to spend a while browsing through the shops. Banks found it all quite pleasant, which didn’t square with his memory of being stuck in a dirty, small-minded provincial backwater. Maybe it was he who had changed the most.

He found Starbucks on the corner by the cathedral entrance and sipped a grande latte while he flipped through the book.

Michelle arrived five minutes late, cool and collected, wearing black slacks and a slate-gray jacket over a cream blouse. She went to the counter for a cappuccino, then sat down opposite Banks.

“Bit of a shock for you, wasn’t it, this morning?” she said.

“I suppose so,” Banks said. “After all these years… I don’t know, I suppose I’d allowed myself to believe there had to be a connection. Conned myself.”

“We all do, one way or another.”

“You’re too young to be so cynical.”

“And you should be old and wise enough to realize that flattery will get you nowhere. You’ve got a bit of froth on your lip.”

Before Banks could wipe it away, Michelle reached out her finger and did it for him, her fingertip brushing his lip.

“Thanks,” he said.

Michelle blushed, turned her head away and let out a little giggle. “I don’t know why I did that,” she said. “My mother used to do it when I drank milk shakes.”

“Haven’t had a milk shake in years,” said Banks.

“Me, neither. What next?”

“Home. And you?”

“Dunno. The leads are hardly jumping out at me left, right and center.”

Banks thought for a moment. He hadn’t told Shaw about the possible Kray connection because Shaw had behaved like a bastard. Besides, it wasn’t his case. There was no reason to keep it from Michelle, though. It probably meant nothing, but at least it would give her something to do, the illusion of progress.

“I’ve heard rumors that Graham Marshall’s dad was connected with the Krays in London just before the family moved up here.”

“Connected? In what way?”

“Strong-arm man. Enforcer. I don’t know how true it is – you know how these things can be exaggerated – but it might be worth a bit of delving into.”

“How do you know this?”

Banks touched the side of his nose. “I’ve got my sources.”

“And how long have you known?”

“Just found out before I came here.”

“Yeah, and the Pope’s Jewish.”

“The point is, what are you going to do about it?”

Michelle moved the froth in her cup around with a spoon. “I don’t suppose it’d do any harm to set a few inquiries in motion. Might even get a trip to London out of it. You sure I won’t come out looking like a complete moron?”

“I can’t guarantee that. It’s always a risk. Better than being the moron who missed the vital clue, though.”

“Thanks. That’s really encouraging. I don’t know very much about the Krays – before my time. I haven’t even seen the film. I do remember the big funeral they gave one of them in the East End not so long ago, though.”

“That’d be Reggie. Couple of years ago. The whole East End came out for him. It was the same when Ronnie died in 1995. Very popular among East Enders, the Krays were. Loved their mother. There were three of them, an older brother called Charlie, but Ronnie and Reggie, the Twins, are the ones people focus on. They pretty much ran the East End during the fifties and sixties, and a fair bit of the West End, too, till they got put away. Ronnie was the crazy one. Paranoid schizophrenic. He ended up in Broadmoor. Reggie was Category ‘A’ in Parkhurst. I suppose you could say that he was led astray by his more dominant twin brother, if you wanted to be charitable.”

“But what could they have to do with Graham Marshall’s disappearance and murder?”

“Probably nothing,” Banks said. “They didn’t operate outside London much, except for maybe a few clubs in cities like Birmingham or Leicester. But if Bill Marshall did work for them, then there’s always the chance he left them reason to bear a grudge, and the twins had a long reach.”

“And for that they’d kill his son?”

“I don’t know, Michelle. These people have a very warped sense of justice. And don’t forget, Ronnie was crazy. He was a sexual sadist, a serious pervert, among other things. He was the one who walked into The Blind Beggar and shot George Cornell right between the eyes in front of a roomful of witnesses. Know what was playing on the jukebox?”

“Tell me.”

“It was The Walker Brothers, ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore.’ And they say the needle got stuck on ‘anymore’ when he was shot.”

“How melodramatic. I don’t remember The Walker Brothers.”

“Not many people do. Want me to sing you a couple of verses?”

“I thought you said you never sing to women you’ve just met?”

“I did?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Nothing slips past you, does it?”

“Not much. I know you read Philip Larkin, too.”

“How?”

“You quoted him.”

“I’m impressed. Anyway, who knows how someone like Ronnie Kray thinks, if ‘think’ is even the right word? He was seeing enemies all around him by then and coming up with more and more dramatic ways of hurting people. He loved to inspire fear and trembling, even in his own men. He was also a homosexual with a taste for teenage boys. They wouldn’t have done Graham themselves, of course – they’d have got agoraphobia if they came this far north of London – but they could have sent someone to do it. Anyway, it’s not only that.”

“What, then?”

“If Bill Marshall did work as a strong-arm man for the Krays, what was he doing up here? You know as well as I do that people don’t just walk away from that line of work. Maybe he got himself fixed up with someone local, a branch manager.”

“So you’re saying he might have been up to the same tricks here, and that might have had something to do with Graham’s death?”

“I’m just saying it’s possible, that’s all. Worth investigating.”

“There was a reference to a protection racket in the old crime logs,” Michelle said. “Someone called Carlo Fiorino. Ring any bells?”

“Vaguely,” said Banks. “Maybe his name was in the papers when I was a kid. Anyway, it’s something to think about.”

“So why didn’t it come up in the original investigation?”

“Didn’t it?” said Banks. “Dunno. Want another coffee?”

Michelle looked into her empty cup. “Sure.”

Banks went and got two more coffees, and when he came back, Michelle was leafing through the book.

“Borrow it if you want,” he said. “I just picked it up to see if I could fill in a bit more background.”

“Thanks. I’d like to read it. Did Graham ever mention the Krays to you?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure that he ever said he or his dad knew them. I’ve also been thinking about the time frame. Graham and his parents came up here around July or August 1964. In July, there was a big brouhaha in the press over Ronnie’s alleged homosexual relationship with Lord Boothby, who denied everything and sued the Sunday Mirror for libel. Ronnie followed suit, but all he got was an apology. Still, there was an upside in that the press had to lay off the Krays for a while after that. Nobody wanted any more libel suits. One day Ronnie was a thug and a gangster, the next, a sporting gentleman. It set the police investigation back, too. Everyone had to walk on eggs around them. Even so, they were arrested the next January for demanding money with menaces. There was no bail and they were tried at the Old Bailey.”

“What happened?”

“They got off. It was a flimsy enough case to start with. There was talk of jury tampering. See, back then, there was no majority verdict like we have today. All twelve had to agree, or there’d be a retrial, which would give the accused even more time to fix things. They dug up some dirt on one of the main prosecution witnesses and that was it, they were free.”

“But how does any of this relate to Graham?”

“I’m not saying it does, only that that was what was happening around 1964 and 1965, the period we’re concerned with. The Krays were in the public eye a lot. The libel case and the trial were both big news, and after they got off they were fireproof for a long time. It was the start of their ascendancy as celebrities, the dark side of Swinging London, you might say. Soon they were being photographed with film stars, sporting figures and pop singers: Barbara Windsor, Sonny Liston, Judy Garland, Victor Spinetti – who was in A Hard Day’s Night, Help! and Magical Mystery Tour, if you can handle another piece of trivia. In the summer of 1965, they had a fiddle involving selling stolen American securities and bonds for the Mafia, and they were squaring up for a big fight with their rivals, the Richardson gang.” Banks tapped the book. “It’s all in there. I don’t know if it means anything. But as your boss made clear this morning, it’s none of my business.”

Michelle frowned. “Yeah, I know. I keep thinking he’s looking over my shoulder even now, in here.”

“I don’t want you to get into trouble for talking to me.”

“Don’t worry. I wasn’t followed. I’m only being paranoid.”

“It doesn’t mean you’re not being followed. Will you keep in touch, let me know if you come up with anything?”

“I shouldn’t, but I will.”

“And if there’s any way I can help…”

“Of course. If you remember anything Graham said or did that might be useful, I’d appreciate knowing.”

“You will. Look, Graham’s mother mentioned a funeral, when the remains have been released. Any idea how long that might be?”

“I’m not sure. It shouldn’t be long. I’ll see how Dr. Cooper’s doing tomorrow.”

“Would you? Good. I think I’d like to come down for it. Even Shaw can’t complain about that. Will you let me know?”

“Of course. Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“That remark Shaw made about the budgie. What did he mean?”

Banks related the sad story of Joey’s flight to freedom and certain death. By the end, Michelle was smiling. “That’s so sad,” she said. “You must have been heartbroken.”

“I got over it. He wasn’t exactly a wonder-budgie. He couldn’t even talk. As everyone told me at the time, it wasn’t Goldie the Eagle.”

“Goldie the Eagle?”

“Yes. Earlier the same year, 1965, Goldie the Eagle escaped from London Zoo. They got her back a couple of weeks later. It was a big story at the time.”

“But your Joey was never found?”

“No. He had no defenses. He must have thought he was home free, but he couldn’t survive all the predators out there. He was in way over his plumage. Look,” Banks went on, “will you answer a question for me?”

Michelle nodded but looked wary and shuffled in her seat.

“Are you married?” Banks asked.

“No,” she said. “No, I’m not.” And she got up and walked out without even saying good-bye.

Banks was about to go after her when his mobile rang. Cursing, and feeling like a bit of a pillock, the way he always did when it went off in a public place, Banks answered the call.

“Alan? It’s Annie. Hope I haven’t called at a bad time.”

“No, not at all.”

“Only we could use a bit of extra help, if you’ve finished your business down there.”

“Pretty much,” said Banks, thinking that his partings with both members of the local constabulary he had met left a lot to be desired. “What’s up?”

“Know that missing kid I told you about?”

“Luke Armitage?”

“That’s the one.”

“What about him?”

“It looks as if it’s just turned into a murder case.”

“Shit,” said Banks. “I’m on my way.”