Final Account

1

It was hard to imagine that anything terrible could happen on such a fine spring evening, but the activity around the little terrace house in Armley indicated that evil made no allowances for the weather.

Three police cars were parked at angles in front of the house. Beyond the line of white tape, reporters badgered the PCs on guard duty, one of whom jotted down Banks’s name and rank before he let him through. Neighbors stood on their doorsteps or by privet hedges and gazed in silence, arms folded, faces grim, and the people working their allotments stopped to watch the spectacle. A small crowd also stood gawping from the steps of the Sikh Temple down the street.

Banks stood on the threshold of the living room. Whatever had happened here, it had been extremely violent: the glass coffee table had been smashed in two; the three-piece suite had been slashed and the stuffing ripped out; books lay torn all over the carpet, pages reduced to confetti; the glass front of the cocktail cabinet was shattered and the crystalware itself lay in bright shards; the music stand lay on the floor with the splintered pieces and broken bow of Pamela’s viola beside it; even the print of Ganesh over the fireplace had been taken from its frame and torn up. Worst of all though, was the broad dark stain on the cream carpet. Blood.

One of the officers cracked a racist joke about Ganesh and another laughed. The elephant god was supposed to be the god of good beginnings, Banks remembered. Upstairs someone was whistling “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago.

“Who the hell are you?”

Banks turned to face the plainclothes man coming out of the wreckage of the kitchen.

“Press?” he went on before Banks had time to answer. “You’re not allowed in. You ought to bloody well know that. Bugger off.” He grabbed Banks’s arm and steered him toward the door. “What does that fucking useless PC think he’s up to, letting you in? I’ll have his bloody balls for Christmas tree decorations.”

“Hang on.” Banks finally managed to get a word in and jerk his arm free of the man’s grasp. He showed his card. The man relaxed.

“Oh. Sorry, sir,” he said. “Detective Sergeant Waltham. I wasn’t to know.” Then he frowned. “What’s North Yorkshire want with this one, if you don’t mind my asking?”

He was in his early thirties, perhaps a few pounds overweight, about three inches taller than Banks, with curly ginger hair. He had a prominent chin, a ruddy complexion and curious catlike green eyes. He wore a dark brown suit, white shirt and plain green tie. Behind him stood a scruffy-looking youth in a leather jacket. Probably his DC, Banks guessed.

“First things first,” said Banks. “What happened to the woman who lives here?”

“Pamela Jeffreys. Know her?”

“What happened to her? Is she still alive?”

“Oh, aye, sir. Just. Someone worked her over a treat. Broken ribs, broken nose, broken fingers. Multiple lacerations, contusions. In fact, multiple just about everything. And it looks as if she broke her leg when she fell. She was in a coma when we found her. First officer on the scene thought she was dead.”

Banks felt a wave of fear and anger surge through his stomach, bringing the bile to his throat. “When did it happen?” he asked.

“We’re not sure, sir. There’s a clock upstairs was smashed at twenty past nine, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. A bit too Agatha Christie, if you ask me. Doc thinks last night, but we’re still interviewing the neighbors.”

“So you think she lay there for nearly twenty-four hours?”

“Could be, sir. The doctor said she’d have bled to death if she hadn’t been a good clotter.”

Banks swallowed. “Raped?”

Waltham shook his head. “Doc says no signs of sexual assault. When we found her she was fully clothed, no signs of interference. Some consolation, eh?”

“Who found her?”

“One of her musician friends got worried when she didn’t show up for rehearsals this morning. Some sort of string quartet or something. Apparently she’d been a bit upset lately. He said she was usually reliable and had never missed a day before. He phoned the house several times during the day and only got her answering machine. After work he drove by and knocked. Still no answer. Then he had a butcher’s through the window. After that, he phoned the local police. He’s in the clear.”

Banks said nothing. DS Waltham leaned against the bannister. The scruffy DC squeezed by them and went upstairs. In the front room, someone laughed out loud again.

Waltham coughed behind his hand. “Er, look, sir, is there something we should know? There’ll have to be questions, of course, but we can be as discreet as anyone if we have to be. What with you showing up here and… ”

“And what, Sergeant?”

“Well, I recognize your voice from her answering machine. It was you, wasn’t it?”

Banks sighed. “Yes, yes it was. But no, there’s nothing you need to be discreet about. There is probably a lot you should know. Shit.” He looked at his watch. Almost seven. “Look, Sergeant, I’d clean forgot I’m supposed to be meeting DI Blackstone for dinner.”

“Our DI Blackstone, sir?”

“Yes. Know him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you think you can get one of the PCs to page him or track him down? It’s the Shabab on Eastgate.”

Waltham smiled. “I know it. Very popular with the lads at Millgarth. I’ll see to it, sir.”

He went to the door and spoke to one of the uniformed constables then came back. “He’s on his way. Look, sir, PC O’Brien there just told me there’s an old geezer across the street thinks he might have seen something. Want to come over?”

“Yes. Very much.” Banks followed him down the path and through the small crowd. One or two reporters shouted for comments, but Waltham just waved them aside. PC O’Brien stood by the low, dark stone wall that ran by the allotments, talking to a painfully thin old man wearing a grubby, collarless shirt. Behind them, other allotment workers stood in a semi-circle, watching, some of them leaning on shovels or rakes. Very Yorkshire Gothic, Banks thought.

“Mr. Judd, sir,” O’Brien said, introducing Waltham, who, in turn, introduced Banks. “He was working his allotment last night just before dark.” Waltham nodded and O’Brien walked off. “Keep those bloody reporters at bay, will you, please, O’Brien?” Waltham called after him.

Banks sat on the wall and took out his cigarettes. He offered them around. Waltham declined, but Mr. Judd accepted one. “Might as well, lad,” he croaked, tapping his chest. “Too late to worry about my health now.”

He did look ill, Banks thought. Sallow flesh hung off the bones of his face above his scrawny neck with its turkey-flaps and puckered skin, like a surgery scar, around his Adam’s apple. The whites of his eyes had a yellow cast, but the dark blue pupils glinted with intelligence. Mr. Judd, Banks decided, was a man whose observations he could trust. He sat by and let Waltham do the questioning.

“What time were you out here?” Waltham asked.

“From seven o’clock till about half past nine,” said Judd. “This time of year I always come out of an evening after tea for a bit of peace, weather permitting. The wife likes to watch telly, but I’ve no patience with it, myself. Nowt but daft buggers acting like daft buggers.” He took a deep draw on the cigarette. Banks noticed him flinch with pain.

“Were you the only one working here?” Waltham asked.

“Aye. T’others had all gone home by then.”

“Can you tell us what you saw?”

“Aye, well it must have been close to knocking-off time. It were getting dark, I remember that. And this car pulled up outside Miss Jeffreys’s house. Dark and shiny, it were. Black.”

“Do you know what make?”

“No, sorry, lad. I wouldn’t know a Mini from an Aston Martin these days, to tell you the truth, especially since we’ve been getting all these foreign cars. It weren’t a big one, though.”

Waltham smiled. “Okay. Go on.”

“Well, two men gets out and walks up the path.”

“What did they look like?”

“Hard to say, really. They were both wearing suits. And one of them was a darkie, but that’s nowt to write home about these days, is it?”

“One of the men was black?”

“Aye.”

“What happened next?”

Judd went through a minor coughing fit and spat a ball of red-green phlegm on the earth beside him. “I packed up and went home. The wife needs a bit of help getting up the apples and pears to bed these days. She can’t walk as well as she used to.”

“Did you see Miss Jeffreys open the door and let the men in?”

“I can’t say I was watching that closely. One minute they were on the doorstep, next they were gone. But the car was still there.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“No. Too far away.” He shrugged. “I thought nothing of it. Insurance men, most like. That’s what they looked like. Or maybe those religious folks, Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

“So you didn’t see them leave?”

“No. I’d gone home by then.”

“Where do you live?”

Judd pointed across the street. “Over there. Number fourteen.” It was five houses down from Pamela Jeffreys’s. “Been there forty years or more, now. A right dump it was when we first moved in. Damp walls, no indoor toilets, no bathroom. Had it done up over the years, though, bit by bit.”

Waltham paused and looked at Banks, who indicated he would like to ask one or two questions. Waltham, Banks noted, had been a patient interviewer, not pushy, rude and condescending toward the old, like some. Maybe it was because he had a DCI watching over his shoulder. And maybe that was being uncharitable.

“Did you know Miss Jeffreys at all?” Banks asked.

Judd shook his head. “Can’t say as I did.”

“But you knew her to say hello to?”

“Oh, aye. She was a right nice lass, if you ask me. And a bonny one, too.” He winked. “Always said hello if she passed me in the street. Always carrying that violin case. I used to ask her if she were in t’mafia and had a machine-gun in it, just joking, like.”

“But you never stopped and chatted?”

“Not apart from that and the odd comment about the weather. What would an old codger like me have to say to a young lass like her? Besides, people round here tend to keep themselves to themselves these days.” He coughed and spat again. “It didn’t used to be that way, tha knows. When Eunice and I first came here there used to be a community. We’d have bloody great big bonfires out in the street on Guy Fawkes night – it were still just cobbles, then, none of this tarmac – and everyone came out. Eunice would make parkin and treacle-toffee. We’d wrap taties in foil and put ’em in t’fire to bake. But it’s all changed. People died, moved away. See that there Sikh Temple?” He pointed down the street. “It used to be a Congregationalist Chapel. Everyone went there on a Sunday morning. They had Monday whist drives, too, and a youth club, Boys’ Brigade and Girl Guides for the young uns. Pantos at Christmas.

“Oh, aye, it’s all changed. People coming and going. We’ve got indoor toilets now, but nobody talks to anyone. Not that I’ve owt against Pakis, like. As I said, she was a nice lass. I saw them taking her out on that stretcher an hour or so back.” He shook his head slowly. “Nowadays you keep your door locked tight. Will she be all right?”

“We don’t know,” Banks said. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed. Did she have many visitors?”

“I didn’t keep a look out. I suppose you mean boyfriends?”

“Anyone. Male or female.”

“I never saw any women call, not by themselves. Her mum and dad came now and then. At least, I assumed it was her mum and dad. And there was one bloke used to visit quite regularly a few months back. Used to park outside our house sometimes. And don’t ask me what kind of car he drove. I can’t even remember the color. But he stopped coming. Hasn’t been anyone since, not that I’ve noticed.”

“What did this man look like?”

“Ordinary really. Fair hair, glasses, a bit taller than thee.”

Keith Rothwell – or Robert Calvert, Banks thought. “Anyone else?”

Judd shook his head then smiled. “Only you and that young woman, t’other day.”

Banks felt Waltham turn and stare at him. If Judd had seen Banks and Susan visit Pamela Jeffreys on Saturday, then he obviously didn’t miss much – morning, afternoon or evening. Banks thanked him.

“We’ll get someone to take a statement soon, Mr. Judd,” said Waltham.

“All right, son,” said the old man, turning back to his allotment. “I won’t be going anywhere except my final resting place, and that’ll be a few months off, God willing. I only wish I could have been more help.”

“You did fine,” said Banks.

“What the bloody hell was all that about, sir?” Waltham asked as they walked away. “You didn’t tell me you’d been here before.”

Banks noticed Ken Blackstone getting out of a dark blue Peugeot opposite the Sikh Temple. “Didn’t have time,” he said to Waltham, moving away. “Later, Sergeant. I’ll explain it all later.”

2

Banks and Blackstone sat in an Indian restaurant near Woodhouse Moor, a short drive across the Aire valley from Pamela Jeffreys’s house, drinking lager and nibbling at pakoras and onion bhaji as they waited for their main courses. Being close to the university, the place was full of students. The aroma was tantalizing – cumin, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, mingled with other spices Banks couldn’t put a name to. “Not exactly the Shabab,” Blackstone had said, “but not bad.” A Yorkshire compliment.

In the brief time they had been there, Banks had explained as succinctly as he could what the hell was going on – at least to the extent that he understood it himself.

“So why do you think they beat up the girl?” Blackstone asked.

“They must have thought she knew where Daniel Clegg was, or that she was hiding something for him. They ripped her place up pretty thoroughly.”

“And you think they’re working for Martin Churchill?”

“Burgess thinks so. It’s possible.”

“Do you think it was the same two who visited Clegg’s secretary and his ex-wife?”

“Yes. I’m certain of it.”

“But they didn’t beat up either of them, or search their places. Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they were getting desperate by the time they got to Pamela. Let’s face it, they’d found out nothing so far. They must have been frustrated. They felt they’d done enough pussyfooting around and it was time for business. Either that or they phoned their boss and he told them to push harder. They also probably thought she was lying or holding out on them for some reason, maybe something in her manner. I don’t know. Perhaps they’re just racists.”

Banks shook his head, feeling a sudden ache and rage. He couldn’t seem to banish the image of Pamela Jeffreys at the hands of her torturers: her terror, her agony, the smashed viola. And would her broken fingers ever heal enough for her to play again? But he didn’t know Blackstone well enough to talk openly about his feelings. “They’d been polite but pushy earlier,” he said. “Maybe they just ran out of patience.”

The main course arrived: a plate of steaming chapatis, chicken bhuna and goat vindaloo, along with a selection of chutneys and raita. They shared out the dishes and started to eat, using the chapatis to shovel mouthfuls of food and mop up the sauce. Blackstone ordered a couple more lagers and a jug of ice water.

“There is another explanation,” Blackstone said between mouthfuls.

“What?”

“That she did know something. That she was involved in the double-cross, or whatever it was. From the quick look I got at her house, I’d agree there’s no doubt they were looking for something. DS Waltham suggested the same thing.”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” Banks said, carefully piling a heap of the hot vindaloo on a scrap of chapati. “But I’m sure she didn’t even know Clegg.”

“That’s only what she told you, remember.”

“Nobody else contradicted her, Ken. Not Melissa Clegg, not the secretary, not even Mr. Judd.”

“Oh, come on, Alan. The old man can’t have seen everything. Nor could the secretary or the ex-wife have known everything. Maybe Clegg never visited her at her home. They could have had some clandestine relationship, met in secret.”

“Why the need for secrecy? Neither of them was married.”

“Perhaps because they were involved in some funny business – not necessarily of a sexual nature – and it wouldn’t be good to be seen together. Maybe she was involved in whatever scam Clegg and Rothwell had going?”

Banks shook his head. “Clegg was a lawyer, Rothwell a financial whiz-kid, and Pamela Jeffreys is a classical musician. It just doesn’t fit.”

“They could have had business interests in common, though.”

“True. Anything’s possible. But remember, Pamela Jeffreys knew Robert Calvert. She told me they met by chance in a pub. She’d never heard of Keith Rothwell until after his murder, when his photo appeared in the papers. She had no reason to lie. She was even putting herself in an awkward situation by calling us. She needn’t have done so. We hadn’t heard of Robert Calvert and might never have done if it weren’t for her. Usually people want to stay as far away from a murder investigation as they can get. You know that, Ken. Until we find out differently, we have to assume that Calvert was a persona invented by Rothwell, with Clegg’s help, solely for pleasure.”

Blackstone swallowed a mouthful of bhuna. “I sometimes think I could do with one of those myself,” he said.

Banks laughed. “Calvert helped Rothwell express another side of his nature, a side he couldn’t indulge at home. Or perhaps it helped him be the way he used to be, relive something he’d lost. As Calvert, he’d have fun gambling and womanizing, and probably subsidizing himself with his illicit earnings from the money-laundering. And Pamela Jeffreys wasn’t his only conquest, you know. There were no doubt others before her, and she was convinced that he’d met someone else, someone he’d really fallen for.”

“That would upset the apple-cart, wouldn’t it?” said Blackstone.

Banks stopped chewing for a moment

“Alan?” Blackstone said. “Alan, are you all right? I know the curry’s hot, but… ”

“What? Oh, yes. It was just something you said, that’s all. I’m surprised I never thought of it before.”

“What?”

“If Calvert really did do it, you know, fall in love, the real thing, with all the bells and whistles, then what would happen to Rothwell?”

“I don’t get you. It’s the same person, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no. What I mean is, how could he go on living his Rothwell life, the one we assumed was his real life, at Arkbeck Farm with Mary, Alison and Tom? Forgive me, I’m just thinking out loud, going nowhere. It doesn’t matter.”

“I do see what you mean,” said Blackstone. “It would bugger up everything, wouldn’t it?”

“Hmm.” Banks finished his meal and washed away some of the spicy heat with a swig of watery lager. His lips still burned, though, and he felt prickles of sweat on his scalp. The signs of a good curry.

“Did the suspects in the Jeffreys beating know about Rothwell?” Blackstone asked.

Banks shook his head. “Don’t know. They haven’t been seen locally, and they certainly don’t match the daughter’s description of his killers.”

“How old is she?”

“Alison? Fifteen.”

“She didn’t see their faces. Could she be wrong?”

“It’s possible, but not that wrong, I don’t think. Nothing matches.”

“Just a thought. I mean, if Rothwell and Clegg were in the laundering business together, and whoever they were working for sent a couple of goons to find Clegg and whatever money he’s made off with, you’d think they’d start with Rothwell’s family, wouldn’t you?”

“Perhaps. But we’ve been keeping too close a watch. They wouldn’t dare show up within twenty miles of Arkbeck Farm.”

“And another thing: if they killed Rothwell, why did they use different people to chase down Clegg? It seems a bit excessive, doesn’t it?”

“Again,” said Banks, “I can only guess. I think some of what’s been happening took them by surprise. It’s possible that they asked Clegg to get rid of Rothwell and he hired his own men. As you know, we’re looking into what connections he might have had with criminal types.”

Blackstone nodded. “I see,” he said. “Then Clegg became a problem and they had to send their own men?”

“Something like that.”

“Makes sense. Clegg was a bit of a ladies’ man, you know, according to my DC who talked to his colleagues,” Blackstone said.

“Yes. His estranged wife, Melissa, suggested as much. Did he have a girlfriend?”

“Yes. Apparently nothing serious since he split up with his wife. Prefers to play the field. Recently he’s been seeing a receptionist from Norwich Insurance. Name of Marci Lapwing, if you can believe that. Aspiring actress. DC Gaitskill had a word with her this morning. Says she’s a bit of a bimbo with obvious attractions. But he’s a bit of an asshole himself, is Gaitskill, so I’d take it with a pinch of salt. Anyway, they saw each other the Saturday before Clegg’s disappearance. They went for dinner, then to a nightclub in Harehills. She spent the night with him and he took her home – that’s Seacroft – after a pub lunch out at the Red Lion in Burnsall on Sunday afternoon. She hasn’t seen or heard from him since.”

“Is she telling the truth?”

“Gaitskill says so. I’d trust him on that.”

“Okay. Thanks, Ken.”

“Clegg had a reserved parking space at the back of the Court Centre. According to what we could find out, he used to eat at a little trattoria on The Headrow after work on Thursdays. The waiters there remember him, all right. Nothing odd about his behavior. He left about six-thirty or a quarter to seven last Thursday, heading west, toward where his car was parked, and that’s the last sighting we have.”

“The car?”

“Red Jag. Gone. We’ve put it out over the PNC along with this.” Blackstone took a photograph from his briefcase and slid it over the tablecloth. It showed the head and shoulders of a man in his early forties, with determined blue eyes, a slightly crooked nose, fair hair and a mouth that had a cruel twist to its left side.

“Clegg?”

Blackstone nodded and put the photograph back in his briefcase. “We’ve also been through Clegg’s house in Chapel Allerton. Nothing. Whatever he was up to, he kept it at the office.”

“Anything on Hamilton and the other car?”

“The boffins are still working on the car. I pulled Hamilton ’s record myself and we had another chat with him at the station this afternoon.” He shook his head. “I can’t see it, Alan. The man’s as thick as two short planks. I don’t think he’s even heard of St. Corona, and he’s strictly small fry on the drugs scene. By the time he gets his stuff to sell, it’s been stepped on by just about every dealer in the city.”

“It was just a thought. Thanks for giving it a try.”

“No problem. We’ll have another shot in a day or two, just in case. And we’ll keep a discreet eye on him. Look, back to what I was saying before. How do you think the goons knew about Pamela Jeffreys if she wasn’t involved?”

Banks felt the anger flare up inside him again, but he held it in check. “That’s all too easy,” he said. “Remember, they were also following me around yesterday. I think they started at Clegg’s office first thing yesterday morning and one, or both of them, stayed on my tail until I spotted them outside Calvert’s flat that evening. They didn’t know who the hell I was, and the only other person I met that they hadn’t talked to already was Pamela Jeffreys. They must have thought we were in it together. I met her near the hall where she was rehearsing, and either one of them hung around to follow her home, or they found out some other way who she was and where she lived.

“She must have looked like their best lead so far. They thought she had some connection with Clegg and that she knew where he was or was holding something for him. Clegg has obviously got something they want. Most likely money. If he was laundering for their boss, then it looks like he might have skipped with a bundle. Either that or he’s got some sort of evidence for blackmail – books, bank account records. And that’s probably what they were looking for when they tore her place apart. Back to square one. The goons worked Pamela over because they thought she knew something, or had something of theirs. She didn’t. And I blame myself. I should have bloody well known I was putting her at risk.”

“Come off it, Alan. How could you know?”

Banks shrugged and tapped out a cigarette. He was the only smoker in the entire restaurant and had to ask the waiter specially for an ashtray. It was getting like that these days, he noted glumly. He’d have to stop sometime soon; he knew he was only postponing the inevitable. He had thought about getting a nicotine patch, then quickly dismissed the idea. It was the feel of the cigarette between his fingers he wanted, the sharp intake of tobacco smoke into the lungs, not some slow oozing of poison through his skin into his blood. Pity about the health problems.

He felt rather like St. Augustine must have felt when he wrote in his Confessions: “Give me chastity and continency – but not yet!”

“You know what really pisses me off?” Banks said after he had lit the cigarette. “Dirty Dick Burgess was following me around that day, too, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’d seen them outside Melissa Clegg’s shop.”

“How would he know who they are?”

“Oh, I think he knows them, all right.”

“Even so, what could he have done? They hadn’t broken any laws.”

Banks shrugged. “I suppose not. It’s too bloody late now, anyway,” he said. “Let’s just hope they don’t go back to see Betty Moorhead and Melissa Clegg.”

“Don’t worry. Charlie Waltham will have them both covered by now. He’s a good bloke, Alan. And he’ll have descriptions of Mutt and Jeff out, too. They won’t get far.”

“I hope not,” said Banks. “I bloody hope not. I’d like a few minutes alone with them in a quiet cell.”

3

Back at the hotel, Banks felt caged. Anger burned inside him like the hot Indian spices, but it would take more than Rennies to quell it. What a bloody fool he’d been to do nothing when he realized he had been followed. He had practically signed Pamela Jeffreys’s death warrant, and it was through no virtue of his that she had survived her ordeal. So far.

He poured himself a shot of Bell ’s and turned on the television. Nothing but a nature program, a silly comedy, an interview with a has-been politician and an old Dirty Harry movie. He watched Clint Eastwood for a while. He had never much enjoyed cop films or cop programs on television, but watching right here and now, he could identify with Dirty Harry tracking down the villains and dealing with them his own way. He had meant what he said to Blackstone. A few minutes alone with Pamela Jeffreys’s attackers and they would know what police brutality was all about.

But he hated himself when he felt that way. Luckily, it was rare. After all, policemen are only human, he reminded himself. They have their loyalties, their lusts, their prejudices, their agonies, their tempers. The problem was that they have to keep these emotions in check to do their jobs properly.

“You go home and puke on your own time if you want to get anywhere in this job, lad,” one of his early mentors had told him at a grisly crime scene. “You don’t do it all over the corpse. And you go home and punch holes in your own wall, not in the child molester’s face.”

Unable to concentrate, even on Dirty Harry, he turned off the television. He couldn’t stand up, couldn’t sit down, didn’t know what he wanted to do. And all the time, the anger and pain churned inside him, and he couldn’t find a way to get them out.

He picked up the phone and dialled the code for Eastvale, then put it down before he started dialling his own number. He wanted to talk to Sandra, but he didn’t think he could explain his feelings to her right now, especially the way they’d been drifting apart of late. God knew, under normal circumstances she was an understanding wife, but this would be pushing it a bit far: a woman he had lusted after, fantasized about, gets beaten within a hair’s breadth of her life, and he’s whipping himself over it. No, he couldn’t explain that to Sandra.

And it wasn’t just a fantasy. Had things turned out differently, he would have phoned Pamela Jeffreys again and would probably be having dinner or drinks with her right now, plucking up the courage to ask her up to his hotel room, Bell’s at the ready. Well, he would never know the outcome now; his virtue hadn’t even been put to the test. Hadn’t St. Augustine said something about that, too, or was that someone else?

He phoned the hospital, and after a bit of officious rank-pulling, actually got a doctor on the line. Yes, Ms. Jeffreys was stable but still in intensive care… no, she was still unconscious… there was no way of telling when or if she would come round… no idea yet if there was any permanent damage. He didn’t feel any better when he hung up.

It was just after nine-thirty. He knocked back the rest of the glass of Scotch, grabbed his sports jacket and went out. Maybe a walk would help, or the anonymous comfort of a crowded pub, not that he expected Leeds city center on a Tuesday evening to be the West End.

He walked along Wellington Street past the National Express coach station and the tall Royal Mail Building to City Square, which was deserted except for the silent nymphs, who stood bearing their torches around the central statue of the Black Prince on his horse. From somewhere along Boar Lane, a drunk shouted in the night; a bottle smashed and a woman laughed loudly.

Banks crossed City Square. He walked fast, trying to burn off some of his rage, and soon found himself in the empty Bond Street Centre with only his reflection in the shop windows he passed.

His memories of Leeds city center were vague, but he was sure that somewhere among the jungle of refurbished Victorian arcades and modern shopping centers there were a number of pubs down the dingy back alleys that riddled the heart of the old city center.

And he was right.

The first one he found was an old brass, mirrors and dark wood Tetley’s house with a fair-sized crowd and a jukebox at tolerable volume. He ordered a pint and stood sideways at the bar, just watching people chat and laugh. It was mostly a young crowd. Only kids seemed to venture into the city centers at night these days. Perhaps that was why their parents and grandparents stayed away. The pubs in Armley and Bramley, in Headingley and Kirkstall, would be full of locals of all age groups mixed together.

As he leaned against the bar, drinking and smoking, nobody paid him any attention. Banks had always been pleased that he didn’t stand out as an obvious policeman. There’d be no mistaking Hatchley or Ken Blackstone no matter how “off duty” they were, but Banks could fit in almost anywhere without attracting too much attention. Over the years, he had found it a useful quality. It wasn’t only that he didn’t look like a copper, whatever that meant, but for some reason his presence didn’t set off the usual warning bells. At the same time, he didn’t like to sit or stand with his back to the door, and he didn’t miss much.

He finished his pint quickly and ordered another one, lighting up again. He was smoking too much, he realized, and he would feel it in the morning. But that was the morning. In the meantime, it gave him something to do with his hands, which, left to their own devices, curled and hardened into fists.

His second pint went down easily, too. The ebb and flow of conversation washed over him. Loudest was a group of two middle-aged couples sitting behind the engraved smoked glass and dark wood at the side of the door. The only people over twenty-five, apart from Banks and the bar staff, they had all had a bit too much to drink. The men were on pints of bitter, and the women on oddly colored concoctions with umbrellas sticking out of them and bits of fruit floating around. By the sound of things they were celebrating the engagement of one couple’s daughter, who wasn’t present, and this brought forth all the old, blue jokes Banks had ever heard in his life.

“There’s these three women,” said one of the men. “The prostitute, the nymphomaniac and the wife. After sex, the prostitute says, ‘That’s it, then,’ all businesslike. The nympho says, ‘That’s it?’ And the wife says, ‘Beige. I think the ceiling should be beige.’”

They howled with laughter. One of the women, a rather blowsy peroxide blonde, like a late-period Diana Dors, with too much make-up and unfocused eyes, looked over and winked at Banks. He winked back and she nudged her friend. They both started to laugh. A man Banks assumed to be her husband popped his head around the divide and said, “Tha’s welcome to her, lad, but I’ll warn thee, she’ll have thee worn out in a week. Bloody insatiable, she is.” She hit him playfully and they all laughed so much they had tears in their eyes. Banks laughed with them, then turned away. The barmaid raised her eyebrows and drew a finger across her throat. Banks drank up and moved on.

Outside, he noticed that the evening had turned a little cooler and dark clouds were fast covering the stars. There was an electric edge to the air that presaged a storm. As if he didn’t feel tense and wound up enough already without the bloody weather conspiring against him, too.

The next pub, down another alley off Briggate, was busier. Groups of young people stood about outside leaning against the wall or sitting on the wooden benches. The place danced with long shadows like something out of an old Orson Welles film. Banks took his pint out into the narrow, whitewashed alley and rested it on a ledge at elbow level, like a bar.

He thought of his last meeting with Pamela Jeffreys. She had run off in tears and he had stood there like an idiot in the park watching his ice-cream melt. He had wanted to apologize for treating her feelings so shoddily, but at the same time another part of him, the professional side, knew he had had to ask, and knew an apology would never be completely genuine. Still, he was only human; susceptible to beauty, he found her attractive, and he liked her warm, open personality, her enthusiasm for life and her sense of humor. Her connection with music also excited him. How much of that would she have left when she came out of hospital? If she came out.

Now, slurping his ale in a back alley in Leeds, he considered again what Blackstone had suggested about her involvement in the affair, but he didn’t think Pamela Jeffreys was that good an actress. She had liked Calvert; they had had simple fun together, with no demands, no strings attached, no deep commitment. And what was wrong with that? She may have felt hurt when he found someone else – after all, nobody likes rejection – but she had liked him enough to swallow her pride and remain friends. She was young; she had energy enough to deal with a few hard knocks. If she had been jealous enough for murder, she would have killed Robert Calvert, probably in his Leeds flat, and if she had been involved in the laundering operation with Rothwell and Clegg, she wouldn’t have phoned the Eastvale station and told them about Calvert.

It was close to eleven; most of the people had gone home. Banks ordered one more for the road, as he would be walking beside it, not driving on it. He was glad he had taken a little time out. The drink had helped douse his anger, or at least dampen it for a while. He was also rational enough to know that tomorrow he would be the professional again and nobody would ever know about his complex, knotted feelings of lust and guilt for Pamela Jeffreys.

He drained his glass, put his cigarettes back in his jacket pocket and set off down the alley. It was long and narrow, rough whitewashed stone on both sides, and lit only by a single high bulb behind wire mesh. When he was a couple of yards from the end, two men walked in from the street and blocked the exit. One of them asked Banks for a light.

Contrary to what one sees on television, detectives rarely find themselves in situations where immediate physical violence is threatened. Banks couldn’t remember the last time he had been in a fight, but he didn’t stop to try to remember. A number of thoughts flashed through his mind at once, but so quickly that an observer would not have seen him hesitate for a second.

First, he knew that they underestimated him; he was neither as drunk nor as unfit as they probably believed. Secondly, he had learned an important lesson from schoolyard fights: you go in first, fast, dirty and hard. Real violence doesn’t take place in slow motion, like a Sam Peckinpah film; it’s usually over before anyone realizes it has begun.

Before they could make their move, Banks took a step closer, pretended to fumble for matches, then grabbed the nearest one by his shirt-front and nutted him hard on the bridge of the nose. The man put his hands over his face and went down on his knees groaning as blood dripped down his shirt-front.

The other hesitated a moment to glance down at his friend. Mistake. Banks grabbed him by the arm, whirled him around and slammed him into the wall. Before the man could get his breath back, Banks punched him in the stomach, and as he bent forward in pain brought his knee up into the man’s face. He felt cheekbone or teeth smash against his kneecap. The man fell, putting his hands to his mouth to stem the flow of blood and vomit.

His mate had clambered to his feet by now and he threw himself at Banks, knocking him hard into the wall and banging the side of his head against the rough stone. He got in a couple of close body punches, but before he could gain any further advantage, Banks pushed him back far enough to start throwing quick jabs at his already broken nose. In the sickly light of the alley, Banks could see blood smeared over his attacker’s face, almost closing one eye and dripping down his chin. The man backed off and slumped against the wall.

By this time, the other was back wobbling on his feet, and Banks went for him. He aimed one sharp blow to the head after the other, splitting an eyebrow, a lip, jarring a tooth loose. The other stumbled away toward the exit. There was no fight left in either of them, but Banks couldn’t stop. He kept slugging away at the man in front of him, feeling the anger in him explode and pour out. When the man tried to protect his face with his hands, Banks pummeled his exposed stomach and ribs.

The man backed away, begging Banks to stop hitting him. His friend, swaying at the alley’s exit now, yelled, “Come on, Kev, run for it! He’s a fucking maniac! He’ll fucking kill us both!” And they both staggered off toward Commercial Street.

Banks watched them go. There was no one else around, thank God. The whole debacle couldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes. When they were out of sight, Banks fell back against the whitewashed wall, shaking, sweating, panting. He took several deep breaths, smoothed his clothes and headed back to the hotel.