Close To Home (aka The Summer That Never Was)

Chapter 10

As Annie waited outside ACC McLaughlin’s office at county headquarters the following morning, having been “summoned,” she felt the same way she had when her geography teacher sent her to the headmaster’s office for defacing a school atlas with her own cartographic designs: fantastic sea creatures and warnings that “Beyond this point be monsters.”

She had little fear of authority, and a person’s rank or status was something she rarely considered in her daily dealings, but somehow this summons made her nervous. Not “Red Ron” himself – he was known to be stern but fair and had a reputation for standing behind his team – but the situation she might find herself in.

It seemed that since she had decided to pursue her career again, she had made nothing but mistakes. First, sliding arse over tit down the side of Harkside reservoir in full view of several of her colleagues, and against the orders of the officer in charge; then the debacle of her excessive force investigation of probationary PC Janet Taylor during her brief (but not brief enough) spell with Complaints and Discipline; and now being blamed for the murder of Luke Armitage. Pretty soon everyone would be calling her Fuck-Up Annie, if they didn’t already. “Got a case you want fucking up, mate? Give it to Annie Cabbot, she’ll see you right.”

So much for a revitalized career. At least she was determined to go down with her middle finger high in the air.

It wasn’t bloody fair, though, Annie thought, as she paced. She was a damn good detective. Everything she had done in all those instances had been right; it was just the spin, the way it all added up, that made her look bad.

Red Ron’s secretary opened the door and ushered Annie into the presence. As befitted his rank, ACC McLaughlin had an even bigger office than Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s, and a carpet with much thicker pile. At least he didn’t have the books that intimidated her so in Gristhorpe’s office.

Red Ron had done a few things to personalize it since he first came to the job about eight months ago: a framed photo of his wife Carol stood on the desk, and a print of Constable’s The Lock hung on the wall. The glass cabinet was full of trophies and photos of Red Ron with various police athletics teams, from rowing to archery. He looked fit and was rumored to be in training for a marathon. He was also rumored to keep a bottle of fine single malt in his bottom drawer, but Annie didn’t expect to see much evidence of that.

“DI Cabbot,” he greeted her, glancing over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. “Please sit down. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Annie sat. There was something different about him, she thought. Then she realized. Red Ron had shaved off his mustache since she had last seen him. She was surprised to find that he had an upper lip. She always thought men grew mustaches and beards to hide weak jaws and thin lips. He kept his receding silver hair cut short instead of growing one side long and trying to hide a bald center by combing it over the top of the skull, the way some men did. Annie didn’t understand that. What was so wrong with going bald? She thought some bald men were quite sexy. It was one of those ridiculous macho male things, she guessed, like the obsession with penis length. Were all men so bloody insecure? Well, she would never find out because none of them would ever talk about it. Not even Banks, though he did at least try more than most. Perhaps it was something they really couldn’t do, something they were genetically incapable of, something going back to the caves and the hunt.

Annie brought herself back to the present. The ACC had just finished signing a stack of papers and after he had buzzed his secretary to come and take them away, he leaned back in his chair and linked his hands behind his head. “I suppose you know why you’re here?” he began.

“Yes, sir.”

“The chief constable got in touch with me last night – just as I was settling down to my dinner, by the way – and said he’d had a complaint about you from Martin Armitage. Would you care to explain what happened?”

Annie told him. As she spoke, she could tell he was listening intently, and every now and then he made a jotting on the pad in front of him. Nice fountain pen, she noticed. A maroon Waterman. Sometimes he frowned, but he didn’t interrupt her once. When she had finished, he paused for a while, then said, “Why did you decide to follow Mr. Armitage from his house that morning?”

“Because I thought his behavior was suspicious, sir. And I was looking for a missing boy.”

“A boy he had already told you was due back that very day.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You didn’t believe him?”

“I suppose not, sir.”

“Why not?”

Annie went over the Armitages’ behavior on the morning in question, the tension she had felt, the brusqueness of their response to her, the haste with which they wanted rid of her. “All I can say, sir,” she said, “is that I found their behavior to be out of sync with what I’d expect from parents who’d discovered that their son was all right and was coming home.”

“All very speculative on your part, DI Cabbot.”

Annie gripped the arms of the chair hard. “I used my judgment, sir. And I stand by it.”

“Hmm.” Red Ron took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It’s a bad business,” he said. “We’ve had the press all over us, and needless to say they’re hot to trot with this idea of a simple kidnapping gone wrong. Add police cock-up to that, and they’d like nothing better.”

“With all due respect, sir, it wasn’t a simple kidnapping.” Annie gave her reasons why, as she had done before with Gristhorpe and Banks.

Red Ron stroked his chin as he listened, plucking at his upper lip as if he still expected to feel the mustache. When she had finished, he asked, as she had hoped he wouldn’t, “Didn’t it cross your mind just for one moment that the kidnapper might have been watching Mr. Armitage make the drop?”

“I… er…”

“You didn’t think of it, did you?”

“I wanted to know what he’d left there.”

“DI Cabbot. Use your intelligence. A man’s stepson is missing. He’s edgy and anxious to be somewhere, annoyed that the police are on his doorstep. You follow him and see him enter a disused shepherd’s shelter with a briefcase and come out without it. What do you surmise?”

Annie felt herself flush with anger at the rightness of his logic. “When you put it like that, sir,” she said through gritted teeth, “I suppose it’s clear he’s paying a ransom. But things don’t always seem so clear cut in the field.”

“You’ve no need to tell me what it’s like in the field, DI Cabbot. I might be an administrator now, but I wasn’t always behind this desk. I’ve served my time in the field. I’ve seen things that would make your hair curl.”

“Then I’m sure you’ll understand what I’m saying.” Was that a half-smile Annie spotted fleeting across Red Ron’s features? Surely not.

He went on, “The point remains that you must have known the risk of being seen by the kidnapper was extremely high, especially as you were in open countryside, and that for whatever reason you disregarded that risk and went into the shelter anyway. And now the boy’s dead.”

“There’s some indication that Luke Armitage might have been killed even before his stepfather delivered the money.”

“That would be a piece of luck for you, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s not fair, sir. I needed to know what was in the briefcase.”

“Why?”

“I needed to be sure. That’s all. And it turned out to be a clue of sorts.”

“The low amount? Yes. But how did you know that wasn’t just the first installment?”

“With respect, sir, kidnappers don’t usually work on the installment plan. Not like blackmailers.”

“But how did you know?”

“I didn’t know, but it seemed a reasonable assumption.”

“You assumed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Look, DI Cabbot. I’m not going to beat about the bush. I don’t like it when members of the public make complaints about officers under my command. I like it even less when a self-important citizen such as Martin Armitage complains to his golf-club crony, the chief constable, who then passes the buck down to me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. You don’t like it.”

“Now, while your actions weren’t exactly by the book, and while you might have lacked judgment in acting so impulsively, I don’t see anything serious enough in what you did to justify punishment.”

Annie began to feel relieved. A bollocking, that was all she was going to get.

“On the other hand…”

Annie’s spirits sank again.

“We don’t have all the facts in yet.”

“Sir?”

“We don’t know whether you were seen by the kidnapper or not, do we?”

“No, sir.”

“And we don’t know exactly when Luke Armitage died.”

“Dr. Glendenning’s doing the postmortem sometime today, sir.”

“Yes, I know. So what I’m saying is that until we have all the facts I’ll postpone judgment. Go back to your duties, detective inspector.”

Annie stood up before he changed his mind. “Yes, sir.”

“And, DI Cabbot?”

“Sir?”

“If you’re going to keep on using your own car on the job, get a bloody police radio fitted, would you?”

Annie blushed. “Yes, sir,” she mumbled, and left.

Michelle got off the InterCity train at King’s Cross at about half past one that afternoon and walked down the steps to the tube, struck, as she always was, by the sheer hustle and bustle of London, the constant noise and motion. Cathedral Square on a summer holiday weekend with a rock band playing in the marketplace didn’t even come close.

Unlike many of her contemporaries, Michelle had never worked on the Met. She had thought of moving there after Greater Manchester, after Melissa had died and Ted had left, but instead she had moved around a lot over the past five years and taken numerous courses, convincing herself that it was all for the good of her career. She suspected, though, that she had just been running. Somewhere a bit more out of the way had seemed the best option, at least for the time being, another low-profile position. And you didn’t get anywhere in today’s police force without switching back and forth a lot – from uniform to CID, from county to county. Career detectives like Jet Harris were a thing of the past.

A few ragged junkies sat propped against the walls of the busy underpass, several of them young girls, Michelle noticed, and too far gone even to beg for change. As she passed, one of them started to moan and wail. She had a bottle in her hand and she banged it hard against the wall until it smashed, echoing in the tiled passage and scattering broken glass all over the place. Like everyone else, Michelle hurried on.

The tube was crowded and she had to stand all the way to Tottenham Court Road, where Retired Detective Inspector Robert Lancaster had agreed to talk to her over a late lunch on Dean Street. It was raining when she walked out onto Oxford Street. Christ, she thought, not again! At this rate, summer would be over before it had begun. Michelle unfurled her umbrella and made her way through the tourists and hustlers. She turned off Oxford Street and crossed Soho Square, then followed Lancaster’s directions and found the place easily enough.

Though it was a pub, Michelle was pleased to see that it looked rather more upmarket than some establishments, with its hanging baskets of flowers outside, stained glass and shiny dark woodwork. She had dressed about as casually as she was capable of, in a mid-length skirt, a pink V-neck top and a light wool jacket, but she would still have looked overdressed in a lot of London pubs. This one, however, catered to a business luncheon crowd. It even had a separate restaurant section away from the smoke and video machines, with table service, no less.

Lancaster, recognizable by the carnation he told Michelle he would be wearing in his gray suit, was a dapper man with a full head of silver hair and a sparkle in his eye. Perhaps a bit portly, Michelle noticed as he stood up to greet her, but definitely well-preserved for his age, which she guessed at around seventy. His face had a florid complexion, but he didn’t otherwise look like a serious drinker. At least he didn’t have that telltale calligraphy of broken red and purple veins just under the surface, like Shaw.

“Mr. Lancaster,” she said, sitting down. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“The pleasure’s mine entirely,” he said, traces of a Cockney accent still in his voice. “Ever since my kids flew the coop and my wife died, I’ll take any opportunity to get out of the house. Besides, it’s not every day I get to come down the West End and have lunch with a pretty girl like yourself.”

Michelle smiled and felt herself blush a little. A girl, he’d called her, when she had turned forty last September. For some reason, she didn’t feel offended by Lancaster’s particular brand of male chauvinism; it had such a quaint, old-fashioned feel to it that it seemed only natural on her part to accept the compliment and thank him with as much grace as possible. She’d soon find out if it got more wearing as their conversation continued.

“I hope you don’t mind my choice of eatery.”

Michelle looked around at the tables with their white linen cloths and weighty cutlery, the uniformed waitresses dashing around. “Not at all,” she said.

He chuckled, a throaty sound. “You wouldn’t believe what this place used to be like. Used to be a real villains’ pub back in the early sixties. Upstairs, especially. You’d be amazed at the jobs planned up there, the contracts put out.”

“Not anymore, I hope?”

“Oh, no. It’s quite respectable now.” He spoke with a tinge of regret in his voice.

A waitress appeared with her order book.

“What would you like to drink?” Lancaster asked.

“Just a fruit juice, please.”

“Orange, grapefruit or pineapple?” the waitress asked.

“Orange is fine.”

“And I’ll have another pint of Guinness, please,” Lancaster said. “Sure you don’t want something a bit stronger, love?”

“No, that’ll be just fine, thanks.” Truth was, Michelle had felt the effects of last night’s bottle of wine that morning, and she had decided to lay off the booze for a day or two. It was still manageable. She never drank during the day, anyway, only in the evening, alone in her flat with the curtains closed and the television on. But if she didn’t nip it in the bud, she’d be the next one with broken blood vessels in her nose.

“The food’s quite good here,” said Lancaster while the waitress was fetching their drinks. “I’d stay away from the lamb curry if I were you, though. Last time I touched it I ended up with a case of Delhi belly.”

Michelle had eaten a curry the previous evening, and though it hadn’t given her “Delhi belly,” it had made its presence felt during the night. She wanted something plain, something unencumbered with fancy sauces, something British.

The waitress returned with her Britvic orange and Lancaster’s Guinness and asked them for their orders.

“I’ll have the Cumberland sausage and mashed potatoes, please,” Michelle said. And diet be damned, she added under her breath. Lancaster ordered the roast beef.

“Bangers and mash,” he said, beaming, when the waitress had wandered off. “Wonderful. One doesn’t often meet people who go for the more traditional food these days. It’s all that nasty foreign muck, isn’t it?”

“I don’t mind a bit of pasta or a curry now and then,” said Michelle, “but sometimes you can’t beat the traditional English.”

Lancaster paused for a few moments, drumming his fingers on the table. Michelle could sense him changing gear, from old-fashioned gallant to seasoned street copper, wondering what she was after and whether it could harm him. She could see it in his eyes, their gaze sharpening, becoming more watchful. She wanted to set him at ease but decided it was best to let him lead, see where it went. At first.

“The bloke that put you on to me said you wanted to know about Reggie and Ronnie.”

There, they were out. The dreaded words. Reggie and Ronnie: The Krays.

“Sort of,” Michelle said. “But let me explain.”

Lancaster listened, taking the occasional sip of Guinness, nodding here and there, as Michelle told him about the Marshalls and what had happened to Graham.

“So, you see,” she finished, “it’s not really the twins, or not just them, anyway, that I’m interested in.”

“Yes, I see,” said Lancaster, drumming his fingers again. Their food arrived and they both took a few bites before he spoke again. “How’s your sausage?” he asked.

“Fine,” said Michelle, wondering if he was going to be any use at all or if it was going to be one of these pleasant but pointless sessions.

“Good. Good. I knew Billy Marshall and his family,” said Lancaster. Then he stuffed his mouth full of roast beef and mashed potato and looked at Michelle, eyes wide and expressionless as he chewed, watching for her reaction. She was surprised, and she was also pleased that the information Banks had given her led somewhere, although she still had no idea where.

“Billy and I grew up just around the corner from one another. We went to the same schools, played on the same streets. We even used to drink in the same pub,” he went on when he’d washed his food down with Guinness. “Does that surprise you?”

“A bit, I suppose. Though, I must say, not much about those days surprises me anymore.”

Lancaster laughed. “You’re right there, love. Another world. See, you’ve got to understand where detectives came from, Michelle. Can I call you Michelle?”

“Of course.”

“The first detectives came from the criminal classes. They were equally at home on either side of the law. Jonathan Wild, the famous thief-taker, for example. Half the time he set up the blokes he fingered. Did you know that? They hanged him in the end. And Vidocq, the Frog-gie? Thief, police informer, master of disguise. Criminal. And back then, the days you’re asking about, I think we were a bit closer to our prototypes than the office boys we seem to have in the force today, if you’ll pardon my criticism. Now, I’m not saying I was ever a criminal myself, but I lived close enough to the line at times to know what a thin line it is, and I was also close enough to know how they thought. And do you imagine for a moment those on the other side didn’t know that, too?”

“You turned a blind eye sometimes?”

“I told you. I went to school with Billy Marshall, grew up the next street over. Only difference was, he was thick as two short planks, but he could fight, and me, well, I had the smarts and the stealth, but I wasn’t much of a scrapper. Enough to survive. And believe me, you had to have that much or you were a goner. Any trouble and I’d talk my way out of it, and if that didn’t work, I’d leg it. Mostly I’d talk my way out. Is it any wonder we went our different ways? Thing is, it could’ve gone either way for me. I ran a bit wild when I was kid, got into a scrape or two. I knew exactly where people like Reggie and Ronnie were coming from. We lived in the same poor neighborhood, in the shadow of the war. I could think like them. I could’ve easily used my street smarts for criminal purposes like Reggie and Ronnie, or…” He let the sentence trail and ate some more roast beef.

“You’re saying morality doesn’t come into it?” Michelle asked. “The law? Justice? Honesty?”

“Words, love,” Lancaster said when he’d finished eating. “Nice words, I’ll grant you, but words nonetheless.”

“So how did you choose? Toss a coin?”

Lancaster laughed. “‘Toss a coin.’ Good one, that. I’ll have to remember it.” Then his expression turned more serious. “No, love. I probably joined for the same reasons you did, same as most people. There wasn’t much pay then, but it seemed a decent enough job, maybe even a bit glamorous and exciting. Fabian of the Yard, and all that stuff. I didn’t want to be a plod walking the beat – oh, I did it, of course, we all did, had to do – but I knew I wanted CID right from the start, and I got it. What I’m saying, love, is that when it came right down to it, when you stood at the bar of your local, or took your usual table in the corner, the one your father had sat at all his life, and when someone like Billy came in, someone you knew was a bit dodgy, well, then it was just a job you did. Everybody knew it. Nothing personal. We mixed, tolerated one another, hoped our paths never crossed in a serious way, a professional way. And remember, I was working out of West End Central then. The East End wasn’t my manor. I just grew up there, lived there. Of course, we were all aware there was a barrier between us, at least one we’d better not breach in public, so it was all, ‘Hello, Billy. How’s it going? How’s the wife and kid?’ ‘Oh, fine, Bob, can’t complain. How’s things down the nick?’ ‘Thriving, Billy boy, thriving.’ ‘Glad to hear it, mate.’ That sort of thing.”

“I can understand that,” said Michelle, who thought she took policing a bit more seriously and wouldn’t be caught dead in the same pub as known villains, unless she was meeting an informant. It was the same thing Shaw had said. The lines between them and us weren’t so clearly drawn as they are today, mostly because many cops and criminals came from the same backgrounds, went to the same schools and drank in the same pubs, as Lancaster had just pointed out, and as long as no innocent bystanders got hurt… no harm done. Nothing personal. Different times.

“Just wanted to get it clear,” said Lancaster, “so you wouldn’t go away thinking I was bent or anything.”

“Why would I think that?”

He winked. “Oh, there were plenty that were. Vice, Obscene Publications, the Sweeney. Oh, yes. It was all just getting going then, ’63, ’64, ’65. There are some naive buggers who look at it as the beginnings of some new age of enlightenment or something. Aquarius, call it what you will. Fucking hippies, with their peace and love and beads and long hair.” He sneered. “Know what it really was? It was the beginnings of the rise of organized crime in this country. Oh, I’m not saying we hadn’t had gangsters before that, but back in the mid-sixties, when Reggie and Ronnie were at their peak, you could have written what your average British copper knew about organized crime on the back of a postage stamp. I kid you not. We knew bugger-all. Even ‘Nipper’ Read, the bloke in charge of nailing the twins. Porn was coming in by the lorryload from Denmark, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands. Someone had to control distribution – wholesale, resale. Same with drugs. Opening of the floodgates, the mid-sixties. License to print money. Maybe the hippies saw a revolution of peace and love in the future, but people like Reggie and Ronnie only saw even more opportunities to make cash, and ultimately all your hippies were just consumers, just another market. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Your real criminals were rubbing their hands in glee when flower power came along, like kids given the free run of the sweetshop.”

This was all very well, Michelle thought, but a man with a bee in his bonnet, the way Lancaster seemed to have, could be difficult to get information from. Lancaster ordered another Guinness – Michelle asked for coffee – and sat back in his chair. He took a pill from a small silver container and washed it down with stout.

“Blood pressure,” he explained. “Anyway, I’m sorry, love,” he went on, as if reading her mind. “I do go on a bit, don’t I? One of the few benefits of getting old. You can go on and on and nobody tells you to shut up.”

“Bill Marshall.”

“Yes, Billy Marshall, as he was called back then. I haven’t forgotten. Haven’t seen or heard of him for years, by the way. Is he still alive?”

“Barely,” said Michelle. “He’s suffered a serious stroke.”

“Poor sod. And the missus?”

“Coping.”

He nodded. “Good. She always was a good coper, was Maggie Marshall.”

Maggie. Michelle just realized that she hadn’t known Mrs. Marshall’s first name. “Did Bill Marshall work for Reggie and Ronnie?” she asked.

“Yes. In a way.”

“What do you mean?”

“A lot of people in the East End worked for Reggie and Ronnie at one time or another. Fit young geezer like Billy, I’d’ve been surprised if he hadn’t. He was a boxer. Amateur, mind you. And so were the Krays. They were into boxing in a big way. They met up at one of the local gyms. Billy did a few odd jobs with them. It paid to have the twins on your side back then, even if you weren’t in deep with them. They made very nasty enemies.”

“So I’ve read.”

Lancaster laughed. “You don’t know the half of it, love.”

“But he wasn’t regularly employed, not on their payroll?”

“That’s about it. An occasional encouragement to pay up, or deterrent against talking. You know the sort of thing.”

“He told you this?”

Lancaster laughed. “Come off it, love. It wasn’t something you discussed over a game of darts at the local.”

“But you knew?”

“It was my job to know. Keeping tabs. I liked to think I knew what was going on, even outside my manor, and that those who counted knew that I knew.”

“What do you remember about him?”

“Nice enough bloke, if you didn’t cross him. Bit of a temper, especially after a jar or two. Like I said, he was strictly low-level muscle, a boxer.”

“He used to boast that he knew Reggie and Ronnie when he was in his cups, after he’d moved up to Peterborough.”

“Typical Billy, that. Didn’t have two brain cells to rub together. I’ll tell you one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You said the kid was stabbed?”

“That’s what the pathologist tells me.”

“Billy never went tooled up. He was strictly a fist man. Maybe a cosh or knuckledusters, depending who he was up against, but never a knife or a gun.”

“I didn’t really regard Bill Marshall as a serious suspect,” Michelle said, “but thanks for letting me know. I’m just wondering if or how all this could have had any connection with Graham’s death.”

“I can’t honestly say I see one, love.”

“If Billy did something to upset his masters, then surely-”

“If Billy Marshall had done anything to upset Reggie or Ronnie, love, he’d have been the one pushing up daisies, not the kid.”

“They wouldn’t have harmed the boy, to make a point?”

“Not their way, no. Direct, not subtle. They had their faults, and there wasn’t much they wouldn’t do if it came right down to it. But if you crossed them, it wasn’t your wife or your kid got hurt, it was you.”

“I understand Ronnie was-”

“Yes, he was. And he liked them young. But not that young.”

“Then-”

“They didn’t hurt kids. It was a man’s world. There was a code. Unwritten. But it was there. And another thing you’ve got to understand, love, is that Reggie and Ronnie were like Robin Hood, Dick Turpin and Billy the Kid all rolled into one, as far as most East Enders were concerned. Even later, you only have to look at their funerals to see that. Fucking royalty. Pardon my French. Folk heroes.”

“And you were the Sheriff of Nottingham?”

Lancaster laughed. “Hardly. I was only a DC, a mere foot soldier. But you get the picture.”

“I think so. And after the day’s battles you’d all adjourn to the local and have a jolly old drink together and talk about football.”

Lancaster laughed. “Something like that. You know, maybe you’re right. Maybe it was a bit of a game. When you nicked someone fair and square, there were no hard feelings. When they put one over on you, you just filed it away till next time. If the courts let them off, then you bought them a pint next time they came in the pub.”

“I think Billy Marshall took the game to Peterborough with him. Ever hear of a bloke called Carlo Fiorino?”

Lancaster’s bushy eyebrows knitted in a frown. “Can’t say as I have, no. But that’s way off my manor. Besides, I’ve already told you, Billy didn’t have the brains to set up an operation. He didn’t have the authority, the command, charisma, call it what you will. Billy Marshall was born to follow orders, not give them, let alone decide what they ought to be. Now that lad of his, he was another matter entirely.”

Michelle pricked up her ears. “Graham? What about him?”

“Young lad with the Beatle cut, right?”

“Sounds like him.”

“If anyone in that family was destined to go far, I’d have said it would’ve been him.”

“What do you mean? Graham was a criminal?”

“No. Well, not apart from a bit of shoplifting, but they all got into that. Me, too, when I was his age. We figured the shops factored the losses into their prices, see, so we were only taking what was rightfully ours anyway. No, it was just that he had brains – though God knows who he got them from – and he was also what they call street smart these days. Never said much, but you could tell he was taking it all in, looking for the main chance.”

“You’re saying that Graham might have been involved with the Krays?”

“Nah. Oh, he might have run an errand or two for them, but they didn’t mess around with twelve-year-old kids. Too much of a liability. Only that he watched and learned. There wasn’t much got by him. Sharp as a tack. Billy used to leave him outside the local, sitting in the street playing marbles with the other kids. It was common enough, then. And some pretty shady customers went in there. Believe me, I know. More than once, the young lad would get half a crown and a watching brief. ‘Keep an eye on that car for me, kid,’ like. Or, ‘If you see a couple of blokes in suits coming this way, stick your head around the door and give me a shout.’ No flies on young Graham Marshall, that’s for sure. I’m just sorry to hear he came to such an early end, though I can’t say as it surprises me that much.”

Dr. Glendenning was delayed in Scarborough, so the postmortem had been put off until late in the afternoon. In the meantime, Banks thought his time would be well spent talking to some of Luke’s teachers, starting with Gavin Barlow, the head teacher of Eastvale Comprehensive.

Despite the threatening sky and earth damp from an earlier shower, Barlow was weeding the garden of his North Eastvale semi, dressed in torn jeans and a dirty old shirt. A collie with a sleek coat jumped up at Banks as he entered through the garden gate, but Barlow soon brought the dog to heel, and it curled up in a corner under the lilac bush and seemed to go to sleep.

“He’s old,” Gavin Barlow said, taking off a glove, wiping his hand on his jeans and offering it. Banks shook and introduced himself.

“Yes, I’ve been expecting a visit,” said Barlow. “Terrible business. Let’s go inside. No, stay, Tristram. Stay!”

Tristram stayed and Banks followed Barlow into the bright, ordered interior of the house. He was clearly interested in antiques, and, by the looks of the gleaming sideboard and drinks cabinet, into restoring them, too. “Can I offer you a beer, or a lager perhaps? Or aren’t you supposed to drink on duty? One never knows, watching Morse and the like on telly.”

Banks smiled. “We’re not supposed to,” he said, not that it had ever stopped him. But it was far too early in the day, and he didn’t have weeding the garden as an excuse. “I’d love a coffee, if you’ve got some.”

“Only instant, I’m afraid.”

“That’s fine.”

“Come on through.”

They went into a small but well-arranged kitchen. Whoever had designed the maple cabinets over the slate-gray countertops had decided on following a pattern of horizontal grain rather than vertical, which made the room seem much more spacious. Banks sat at a breakfast nook with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth while Barlow made the coffee.

“Daddy, who’s this?”

A girl of about sixteen appeared in the doorway, all long blond hair and bare leg. She reminded Banks a bit of Kay Summerville.

“It’s a policeman come to talk about Luke Armitage, Rose. Off you go.”

Rose pouted, then made a theatrical about-turn and sashayed away, wiggling her hips. “Daughters,” said Barlow. “Have you any of your own?”

Banks told him about Tracy.

“Tracy Banks. Of course, now I remember her. I just didn’t put two and two together when I saw your identification. Tracy. Very bright girl. How is she doing?”

“Fine. She’s just finished her second year at Leeds. History.”

“Do give her my best regards when you see her. I can’t say I knew her well… so many pupils and so little time… but I do remember talking to her.”

Gavin Barlow looked a bit like Tony Blair, Banks thought. Definitely more of an Educational Unit manager than an old-style school headmaster, the way his predecessor Mr. Buxton had been. Banks remembered the old fellow who’d been in charge during the Gallows View case, when Banks had first moved up north. Buxton was the last of a dying breed, with his batlike cape and a well-thumbed copy of Cicero on his desk. Gavin Barlow probably thought “Latin” referred to a type of dance music, though maybe that was being a bit unfair. At least the radio station he was tuned in to was playing Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy” at eleven o’clock in the morning – a good sign.

“I’m not sure I can tell you very much about Luke,” said Gavin Barlow, bringing over two mugs of instant coffee and sitting opposite Banks. “It’s usually only the persistent troublemakers who come to my attention.”

“And Luke wasn’t a troublemaker?”

“Good heavens, no! You’d hardly know he was there if he didn’t move once in a while.”

“Any trouble at all?”

“Not really trouble. Nothing his form tutor couldn’t deal with.”

“Tell me.”

“Luke didn’t like games, and he once forged a note from his mother excusing him on the grounds of a stomach upset. It was a note the PE teacher remembered seeing a few months earlier, and Luke had traced it out with a new date. Quite a good forgery, really.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing much. Detention, a warning to his mother. Odd, as he wasn’t bad at all.”

“Wasn’t bad at what?”

“Rugby. Luke was a decent wing three-quarters. Fast and slippery. When he could be bothered playing.”

“But he didn’t like games?”

“He had no interest in sports. He’d far rather read, or just sit in a corner and stare out the window. God only knows what was going on in that head of his half the time.”

“Did Luke have any close friends at school, any other pupils he might have confided in?”

“I really can’t say. He always seemed to be a bit of a loner. We encourage group activities, of course, but you can’t always… I mean, you can’t force people to be sociable, can you?”

Banks opened his briefcase and slipped out the artist’s impression of the girl Josie Batty had seen going to HMV with Luke. “Do you recognize this girl?” he asked, not sure of how close a likeness it was.

Barlow squinted at it, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I can’t say as I do. I’m not saying we don’t have pupils who affect that general look, but not very many, and nobody quite like this.”

“So you’ve never seen her or anyone like her with Luke?”

“No.”

Banks returned the sketch to his briefcase. “What about his schoolwork? Did he show any promise?”

“Enormous promise. His work in math left a lot to be desired, but when it came to English and music, he was remarkably gifted.”

“What about the other subjects?”

“Good enough for university, if that’s what you mean. Especially languages and social studies. You could tell that even at his early age. Unless…”

“What?”

“Well, unless he went off the rails. I’ve seen it happen before with bright and sensitive pupils. They fall in with the wrong crowd, neglect their work… You can guess the rest.”

Banks, who had gone off the rails a bit himself after Graham’s disappearance, could. “Were there any teachers Luke was particularly close to?” he asked. “Anyone who might be able to tell me a bit more about him?”

“Yes. You might try Ms. Anderson. Lauren Anderson. She teaches English and art history. Luke was way ahead of his classmates in his appreciation of literature, and in its composition, and I believe Ms. Anderson gave him extra tutoring.”

Lauren Anderson’s name had come up in the company’s records of Luke’s cell phone calls, Banks remembered. “Is that something the school does often?”

“If the student seems likely to benefit from it, then yes, certainly. You have to understand that we get such a broad range of abilities and interests, and we have to pitch our teaching level just a little above the middle. Too high and you lose most of the class, too low and the brighter students become bored and distracted. But it’s not all as bad as they say it is in the newspapers. We’re lucky in that we have a lot of passionate and committed teachers at Eastvale Comprehensive. Ms. Anderson is one of them. Luke was also taking violin lessons after school.”

“Yes, he had a violin in his bedroom.”

“I told you, he’s not your common-or-garden pupil.” Barlow paused for a moment, staring out the window. “Wasn’t. We’ll miss him.”

“Even if you hardly knew he was there?”

“I was probably overstating the case,” Barlow said with a frown. “Luke had a certain presence. What I meant was that he just didn’t make a lot of noise or demand a lot of attention.”

“Who was giving him violin lessons?”

“Our music teacher, Alastair Ford. He’s quite a skilled player himself. Plays with a local string quartet. Strictly amateur, of course. You might have heard of them; they’re called the Aeolian Quartet. I understand they’re very good, though I must admit that my tastes edge more toward Miles than Mahler.”

The Aeolian. Banks had, indeed, heard of them. Not only that, but he had heard them. The last time was shortly after Christmas, at the community center with Annie Cabbot. They had played Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet and made a very good job of it, Banks remembered.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” he asked, standing to leave.

“I don’t think there is,” said Barlow. “All in all, Luke Armitage was a bit of a dark horse.”

As they walked through to the hall, Banks felt certain he caught a flurry of blond hair and long leg ducking through a doorway, but he could have been mistaken. Why would Rose Barlow want to listen in on their conversation, anyway?

The rain seemed to have settled in for the day after a short afternoon respite, a constant drizzle from a sky the color of dirty dishwater, when Annie did the rounds of Luke’s final ports of call. She found out nothing from the HMV staff, perhaps because they had such a high turnover and it was a large shop, hard to keep an eye on everyone. No one recognized the sketch. Besides, as one salesperson told her, many of the kids who shopped there looked pretty much the same. Black clothing wasn’t exactly unusual as far as HMV’s customers were concerned, nor was body-piercing or tattoos.

She fared little better at the computer shop on North Market Street. Gerald Kelly, the sole proprietor and staff member, remembered just about all his customers, but he had seen no one resembling the girl in black with Luke, who had always been alone on his visits to the shop.

Annie had just one last call. Norman’s Used Books was a dank, cramped space down a flight of stone steps under a bakery, one of several shops that seemed to be set right into the church walls in the market square. The books all smelled of mildew, but you could find the most obscure things sometimes. Annie herself had shopped there once or twice, looking for old art books, and had even found some decent prints among the boxes the owner kept at the back of the shop, though they were sometimes warped and discolored because of the damp.

The roof was so low and the small room so full of books – not only in cases against the walls, but piled up haphazardly on tables, ready to teeter over if you so much as breathed on them – that you had to stoop and make your way around the place very carefully. It must have been even harder for Luke, Annie thought, as he was taller and more gangly than her.

The owner himself, Norman Wells, was just a little over five feet, with thin brown hair, a bulbous sort of face and rheumy eyes. Because it was so cold and damp down there, no matter what the weather was like up above, he always wore a moth-eaten gray cardigan, woolly gloves with the fingers cut off and an old Leeds United scarf. He couldn’t make much of a living out of the little shop, Annie thought, though she doubted the overheads were very high. Even in the depths of winter a one-element electric fire was the only source of heat.

Norman Wells glanced up from the paperback he was reading and nodded in Annie’s direction. He seemed surprised when she showed her warrant card and spoke to him.

“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” he said, taking off his reading glasses, which hung on a piece of string around his neck.

“I’ve been here once or twice.”

“Thought so. I never forget a face. Art, isn’t it?”

“Pardon?”

“Your interest. Art.”

“Oh, yes.” Annie showed him a photograph of Luke. “Remember him?”

Wells looked alarmed. “Course I do. He’s the lad who disappeared, isn’t he? One of your lot was around the other day asking about him. I told him all I know.”

“I’m sure you did, Mr. Wells,” said Annie, “but things have changed. It’s a murder investigation now and we have to go over the ground afresh.”

“Murder? That lad?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Bloody hell. I hadn’t heard. Who’d…? He wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

“Did you know him well, then?”

“Well? No, I wouldn’t say that. But we talked.”

“What about?”

“Books. He knew a lot more than most kids his age. His reading level was way beyond that of his contemporaries.”

“How do you know?”

“I… Never mind.”

“Mr. Wells?”

“Let’s just say I used to be a teacher, that’s all. I know about these things, and that lad was bordering on genius.”

“I understand he bought two books from you on his last visit.”

“Yes, like I told the other copper. Crime and Punishment and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.”

“They sound a bit advanced, even for him.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Wells protested. “If I hadn’t thought him ready I wouldn’t have sold him them. He’d already been through T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, most of Camus and Dubliners. I didn’t think he was quite ready for Ulysses or Pound’s Cantos, but he could handle the Portrait, no problem.”

Annie, who had heard of these books but had read only the Eliot and a few of Joyce’s short stories at school, was impressed. So the books she had seen in Luke’s room weren’t just for show; he really did read and probably even understand them. At fifteen, she’d been reading historical sagas and sword and sorcery series, not literature with a capital L. That was reserved for school and was tedious in the extreme, thanks to Mr. Bolton, the English teacher, who made the stuff sound about as exciting as a wet Sunday in Cleethorpes.

“How often did Luke call by?” she asked.

“About once a month. Or whenever he was out of something to read.”

“He had the money. Why didn’t he go to Waterstone’s and buy them new?”

“Don’t ask me. We got chatting the first time he dropped in-”

“When was that?”

“Maybe eighteen months or so ago. Anyway, as I say, we got chatting and he came back.” He looked around at the stained ceilings, flaking plaster and tottering piles of books and smiled at Annie, showing crooked teeth. “I suppose there must have been something he liked about the place.”

“Must be the service,” Annie said.

Wells laughed. “I can tell you one thing. He liked those old Penguin Modern Classics. The old ones with the gray spines, not these modern pale-green things. Real paperbacks, not your trade size. And you can’t buy those at Waterstone’s. Same with the old Pan covers.”

Something moved in the back of the shop and a pile of books fell over. Annie thought she glimpsed a tabby cat slinking away into the deeper shadows.

Wells sighed. “Familiar’s gone and done it again.”

“Familiar?”

“My cat. No bookshop’s complete without a cat. After witch’s familiar. See?”

“I suppose so. Did Luke ever come in here with anyone else?”

“No.”

Annie took her copy of the artist’s impression out and set it on the table in front of him. “What about her?”

Wells leaned forward, put his glasses on again and examined the sketch. “It looks like her,” he said. “I told you I never forget a face.”

“But you told me Luke never came in with anyone else,” Annie said, feeling a tingle of excitement rise up her spine.

Wells looked at her. “Who said she was with him? No, she came in with another bloke, same sort of clothing and body-piercing.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know. They must have been a bit short of money, though.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because they came in with an armful of brand-new books to sell. Stolen, I thought. Plain as day. Stolen books. I don’t have any truck with that sort of thing, so I sent them packing.”