Final Account

1

The uniformed constable lifted the tape and waved Detective Chief Inspector Banks through the gate at two forty-seven in the morning.

Banks’s headlights danced over the scene as he drove into the bumpy farmyard and came to a halt. To his left stood the squat, solid house itself, with its walls of thick limestone and mossy, flagstone roof. Lights shone in both the upstairs and downstairs windows. To his right, a high stone wall buttressed a copse that straggled up the daleside, where the trees became lost in darkness. Straight ahead stood the barn.

A group of officers had gathered around the open doors, inside which a ball of light seemed to be moving. They looked like the cast of a fifties sci-fi film gazing in awe on an alien spaceship or life-form.

When Banks arrived, they parted in silence to let him through. As he entered, he noticed one young PC leaning against the outside wall dribbling vomit on his size twelves. Inside, the scene looked like a film set.

Peter Darby, the police photographer, was busy videotaping, and the source of the light was attached to the top of his camera. It created an eerie chiaroscuro and sudden, sickening illuminations as it swept around the barn’s interior. All he needed, Banks thought, was for someone to yell “Action!” and the place would suddenly be full of sound and motion.

But no amount of yelling would breathe life back into the grotesque shape on the floor, by which a whey-faced young police surgeon, Dr. Burns, squatted with a black notebook in his hand.

At first, the position of the body reminded Banks of a parody of Moslem prayer: the kneeling man bent forward from the waist, arms stretched out in front, bum in the air, forehead touching the ground, perhaps facing Mecca. His fists were clenched in the dirt, and Banks noticed the glint of a gold cufflink, initialled “KAR,” as Darby’s light flashed on it.

But there was no forehead to touch the ground. Above the charcoal suit jacket, the blood-soaked collar of the man’s shirt protruded about an inch, and after that came nothing but a dark, coagulated mass of bone and tissue spread out on the dirt like an oil stain: a shotgun wound, by the look of it. Patches of blood, bone and brain matter stuck to the whitewashed stone walls in abstract-expressionist patterns. Darby’s roving light caught what looked like a fragment of skull sprouting a tuft of fair hair beside a rusty hoe.

Banks felt the bile rise in his throat. He could still smell the gunpowder, reminiscent of a childhood bonfire night, mixed with the stink of urine and feces and the rancid raw meat smell of sudden violent death.

“What time did the call come in?” he asked the PC beside him.

“One thirty-eight, sir. PC Carstairs from Relton was first on the scene. He’s still puking up out front.”

Banks nodded. “Do we know who the victim was?”

“DC Gay checked his wallet, sir. Name’s Keith Rothwell. That’s the name of the bloke who lived here, all right.” He pointed over to the house. “Arkbeck Farm, it’s called.”

“A farmer?”

“Nay, sir. Accountant. Some sort of businessman, anyroad.”

One of the constables found a light switch and turned on the bare bulb, which became a foundation for the brighter light of Darby’s video camera. Most regions didn’t use video because it was hard to get good enough quality, but Peter Darby was a hardware junkie, forever experimenting.

Banks turned his attention back to the scene. The place looked as if it had once been a large stone Yorkshire barn, with double doors and a hayloft, called a “field house” in those parts. Originally, it would have been used to keep the cows inside between November and May, and to store fodder, but Rothwell seemed to have converted it into a garage.

To Banks’s right, a silver-gray BMW, parked at a slight angle, took up about half the space. Beyond the car, against the far wall, a number of metal shelf units held all the tools and potions one would associate with car care: antifreeze, wax polish, oily rags, screwdrivers, spanners. Rothwell had retained the rural look in the other half of the garage. He had even hung old farm implements on the whitewashed stone wall: a mucking rake, a hay knife, a draining scoop and a Tom spade, among others, all suitably rusted.

As he stood there, Banks tried to picture what might have happened. The victim had clearly been kneeling, perhaps praying or pleading for his life. It certainly didn’t look as if he had tried to escape. Why had he submitted so easily? Not much choice, probably, Banks thought. You usually don’t argue when someone is pointing a shotgun at you. But still… would a man simply kneel there, brace himself and wait for his executioner to pull the trigger?

Banks turned and left the barn. Outside, he met Detective Sergeant Philip Richmond and Detective Constable Susan Gay coming from around the back.

“Nothing there, sir, far as I can tell,” said Richmond, a large torch in his hand. Susan, beside him, looked pale in the glow from the barn entrance.

“All right?” Banks asked her.

“I’m okay now, sir. I was sick, though.”

Richmond looked the same as ever. His sang-froid was legendary around the place, so much so that Banks sometimes wondered if he had any feelings at all or whether he had come to resemble one of those computers he spent most of his time with.

“Anyone know what happened?” Banks asked.

“PC Carstairs had a quick word with the victim’s wife when he first got here,” said Susan. “All she could tell him was that a couple of men were waiting when she got home and they took her husband outside and shot him.” She shrugged. “Then she became hysterical. I believe she’s under sedation now, sir. I fished his wallet from his pocket, anyway,” she went on, holding up a plastic bag. “Says his name’s-”

“Yes, I know,” said Banks. “Have we got an Exhibits Officer yet?”

“No, sir,” Susan answered, then both she and Phil Richmond looked away. Exhibits Officer was one of the least popular jobs in an investigation. It meant keeping track of every piece of possible evidence and preserving a record of continuity. It usually went to whoever was in the doghouse at the time.

“Get young Farnley on the job, then,” Banks said. PC Farnley hadn’t offended anyone or cocked up a case, but he lacked imagination and had a general reputation around the station as a crashing golf bore.

Clearly relieved, Richmond and Susan wandered off toward the Scene-of-Crime team, who had just pulled into the farmyard in a large van. As they piled out in their white boiler suits, they looked like a team of government scientists sent to examine the alien landing-spot. Pretty soon, Banks thought, if they weren’t all careful, there would be a giant spider or a huge gooey blob rolling around the Yorkshire Dales gobbling up everyone in sight.

The night was cool and still, the air moist, tinged with a hint of manure. Banks still felt half-asleep, despite the shock of what he had seen in the garage. Maybe he was dreaming. No. He thought of Sandra, warm at home in bed, and sighed.

Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe’s arrival at about three-thirty brought him out of his reverie. Gristhorpe limped over from his car. He wore an old donkey-jacket over his shirt, and he clearly hadn’t bothered to shave or comb his unruly thatch of gray hair.

“Bloody hell, Alan,” he said by way of greeting, “tha looks like Columbo.”

There’s the pot calling the kettle black, Banks thought. Still, the super was right. He had thrown on an old raincoat over his shirt and trousers because he knew the night would be chilly.

After Banks had explained what he had found out so far, Gristhorpe took a quick look in the barn, questioned PC Carstairs, the first officer at the scene, then rejoined Banks, his usually ruddy, pock-marked face a little paler. “Let’s go in the house, shall we, Alan?” he said. “I hear PC Weaver’s brewing up. He should be able to give us some background.”

They walked across the dirt yard. Above them, the stars shone cold and bright like chips of ice on black velvet.

The farmhouse was cozy and warm inside, a welcome change from the cool night and the gruesome scene in the barn. It had been renovated according to the yuppie idea of the real rustic look, with exposed beams and rough stone walls in an open, split-level living room, all earthy browns and greens. The remains of a log fire glowed in the stone hearth, and beside it stood a pair of antique andirons and a matching rack holding poker and tongs.

In front of the fire, Banks noticed two hard-backed chairs facing one another. One of them had fallen over, or had been pushed on its side. Beside both of them lay coils of rope. One of the chair seats looked wet.

Banks and Gristhorpe walked through into the ultramodern kitchen, which looked like something from a color supplement, where PC Weaver was pouring boiling water into a large red teapot.

“Nearly ready, sir,” he said, when he saw the CID officers. “I’ll just let it mash a couple of minutes.”

The kitchen walls were done in bright red and white patterned tiles, and every available inch of space had been used to wedge fitted microwave, oven, fridge, dishwasher, cupboards and the like. It also boasted a central island unit, complete with tall pine stools. Banks and Gristhorpe sat down.

“How’s his wife?” Gristhorpe asked.

“There’s a wife and daughter here, sir,” said Weaver. “The doctor’s seen them. They’re both unharmed, but they’re suffering from shock. Hardly surprising when you consider they found the body. They’re upstairs with WPC Smithies. Apparently there’s also a son rambling around America somewhere.”

“Who was this Rothwell bloke?” Banks asked. “He must have had a bob or two. Anything missing?”

“We don’t know yet, sir,” Weaver said. He looked around the bright kitchen. “But I see what you mean. He was some sort of financial whiz-kid, I think. These newfangled kitchens don’t come cheap, I can tell you. The wife’s got in the habit of leaving the Mail on Sunday supplement open at some design or another. Her way of dropping hints, like, and about as subtle as a blow on the head with a hammer. The price of them makes me cringe. I tell her the one we’ve got is perfectly all right, but she-”

As he talked, Weaver began to pour the tea into the row of cups and mugs he had arranged. But after filling the second one, he stopped and stared at the door. Banks and Gristhorpe followed his gaze and saw a young girl standing there, her slight figure framed in the doorway. She rubbed her eyes and stretched.

“Hello,” she said. “Are you the detectives? I’d like to talk to you. My name’s Alison Rothwell and someone just killed my father.”

2

She was about fifteen, Banks guessed, but she made no attempt to make herself look older, as many teenagers do. She wore a baggy, gray sweatshirt advertising an American football team, and a blue tracksuit bottom with a white stripe down each side. Apart from the bruiselike pouches under her light blue eyes, her complexion was pale. Her mousy blonde hair was parted in the center and hung in uncombed strands over her shoulders. Her mouth, with its pale, thin lips, was too small for her oval face.

“Can I have some tea, please?” she asked. Banks noticed she had a slight lisp.

PC Weaver looked for direction. “Go ahead, lad,” Gristhorpe told him. “Give the lass some tea.” Then he turned to Alison Rothwell. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be upstairs with your mum, love?”

Alison shook her head. “Mum’ll be all right. She’s asleep and there’s a policewoman sitting by her. I can’t sleep. It keeps going round in my mind, what happened. I want to tell you about it now. Can I?”

“Of course.” Gristhorpe asked PC Weaver to stay and take notes. He introduced Banks and himself, then pulled out a stool for her. Alison gave them a sad, shy smile and sat down, holding the mug of tea to her chest with both hands as if she needed its heat. Gristhorpe indicated subtly that Banks should do the questioning.

“Are you sure you feel up to this?” Banks asked her first.

Alison nodded. “I think so.”

“Would you like to tell us what happened, then?”

Alison took a deep breath. Her eyes focused on something Banks couldn’t see.

“It was just after dark,” she began. “About ten o’clock, quarter past or thereabouts. I was reading. I thought I heard a sound out in the yard.”

“What kind of sound?” Banks asked.

“I… I don’t know. Just as if someone was out there. A thud, like someone bumping into something or something falling on the ground.”

“Carry on.”

Alison hugged her cup even closer. “At first I didn’t pay it any mind. I carried on reading, then I heard another sound, a sort of scraping, maybe ten minutes later.”

“Then what did you do?” Banks asked.

“I turned the yard light on and looked out of the window, but I couldn’t see anything.”

“Did you have the television on, some music?”

“No. That’s why I could hear the sounds outside so clearly. Usually it’s so quiet and peaceful up here. All you can hear at night is the wind through the trees, and sometimes a lost sheep baa-ing, or a curlew up on the moors.”

“Weren’t you scared being by yourself?”

“No. I like it. Even when I heard the noise I just thought it might be a stray dog or a sheep or something.”

“Where were your parents at this time?”

“They were out. It’s their wedding anniversary. Their twenty-first. They went out to dinner in Eastvale.”

“You didn’t want to go with them?”

“No. Well… I mean, it was their anniversary, wasn’t it?” She turned up her nose. “Besides, I don’t like fancy restaurants. And I don’t like Italian food. Anyway, it’s not as if it was Home Alone or something. I am nearly sixteen, you know. And it was my choice. I’d rather stay home and read. I don’t mind being by myself.”

Perhaps, Banks guessed, they hadn’t invited her. “Carry on,” he said. “After you turned the yard light on, what did you do?”

“When I couldn’t see anything, I just sort of brushed it off. Then I heard another noise, like a stone or something, hitting the wall. I was fed up of being disturbed by then, so I decided to go out and see what it was.”

“You still weren’t frightened?”

“A bit, maybe, by then. But not really scared. I still thought it was probably an animal or something like that, maybe a fox. We get them sometimes.”

“Then what happened?”

“I opened the front door, and as soon as I stepped out, someone grabbed me and dragged me back inside and tied me to the chair. Then they put a rag in my mouth and put tape over it. I couldn’t swallow properly. It was all dry and it tasted of salt and oil.”

Banks noticed her knuckles had turned white around the mug. He worried she would crush it. “How many of them were there, Alison?” he asked.

“Two.”

“Do you remember anything about them?”

She shook her head. “They were both dressed all in black, except one of them had white trainers on. The other had some sort of suede slip-ons, brown I think.”

“You didn’t see their faces?”

Alison hooked her feet over the crossbar. “No, they had balaclavas on, black ones. But they weren’t like the ones you’d buy to keep you warm. They were just made of cotton or some other thin material. They had little slits for the eyes and slits just under the nose so they could breathe.”

Banks noticed that she had turned paler. “Are you all right, Alison?” he asked. “Do you want to stop now and rest?”

Alison shook her head. Her teeth were clenched. “No. I’ll be all right. Just let me… ” She sipped some tea and seemed to relax a little.

“How tall were they?” Banks asked.

“One was about as big as you.” She looked at Banks, who at only five foot nine was quite small for a policeman – just over regulation height, in fact. “But he was fatter. Not really fat, but just not, you know, wiry… like you. The other was a few inches taller, maybe six foot, and quite thin.”

“You’re doing really well, Alison,” Banks said. “Was there anything else about them?”

“No. I can’t remember.”

“Did either of them speak?”

“When he dragged me back inside, the smaller one said, ‘Keep quiet and do as you’re told and we won’t hurt you.’”

“Did you notice his accent?”

“Not really. It sounded ordinary. I mean, not foreign or anything.”

“Local?”

“ Yorkshire, yes. But not Dales. Maybe Leeds or something. You know how it sounds different, more citified?”

“Good. You’re doing just fine. What happened next?”

“They tied me to the chair with some rope and just sat and watched television. First the news was on, then some horrible American film about a psycho slashing women. They seemed to like that. One of them kept laughing when a woman got killed, as if it was funny.”

“You heard them laugh?”

“Just one of them, the tall one. The other one told him to shut up. He sounded like he was in charge.”

“The smaller one?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all he said: ‘Shut up’?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anything unusual about the taller man’s laugh?”

“I… I don’t… I can’t remember.” Alison wiped a tear from her eye with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “It was just a laugh, that’s all.”

“It’s all right. Don’t worry about it. Did they harm you in any way?”

Alison reddened and looked down into her half-empty mug. “The smaller one came over to me when I was tied up, and he put his hand on my breast. But the other one made him stop. It was the only time he said anything.”

“How did he make him stop? What did he do?”

“He just said not to, that it wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Did he use those exact words, Alison? Did he say, ‘It’s not part of the deal’?”

“Yes. I think so. I mean, I’m not completely sure, but it was something like that. The smaller man didn’t seem to like it, being told what to do by the other, but he left me alone after that.”

“Did you see any kind of weapon?” Banks asked.

“Yes. The kind of gun that farmers have, with two barrels. A shotgun.”

“Who had it?”

“The smaller man, the one in charge.”

“Did you hear a car at any time?”

“No. Only when Mum and Dad came home. I mean, I heard cars go by on the road sometimes, you know, the one that goes through Relton and right over the moors into the next dale. But I didn’t hear anyone coming or going along our driveway.”

“What happened when your parents came home?”

Alison paused and swirled the tea in the bottom of her mug as if she were trying to see into her future. “It must have been about half past eleven or later. The men waited behind the door and the tall one grabbed Mum while the other put his gun to Dad’s neck. I tried to scream and warn them, honest I did, but the rag in my mouth… I just couldn’t make a sound…” She ran her sleeve across her eyes again and sniffled. Banks gestured to PC Weaver, who found a box of tissues on the window-sill and brought them over.

“Thank you,” Alison said. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to go on if you don’t want,” Banks said. “It can wait till tomorrow.”

“No. I’ve started. I want to. Besides, there’s not much more to tell. They tied Mum up the same as me and we sat there facing each other. Then they went outside with Dad. Then we heard the bang.”

“How long between the time they went out and the shot?”

Alison shook her head dreamily. She held the mug up close to her throat. The sleeves of her sweatshirt had slipped down, and Banks could see the raw, red lines where the rope had cut into her flesh. “I don’t know. It seemed like a long time. But all I can remember is we just sat looking at each other, Mum and me, and we didn’t know what was happening. I remember a night-bird calling somewhere. Not a curlew. I don’t know what it was. And it seemed like forever, like time just stretched out and Mum and I got really scared now looking at one another not knowing what was going on. Then we heard the explosion and… and it was like it all snapped and I saw something die in Mum’s eyes, it was so, so… ” Alison dropped the mug, which clipped the corner of the table then fell and spilled without breaking on the floor. The sobs seemed to start deep inside her, then she began to shake and wail.

Banks went over and put his arms around her, and she clung onto him for dear life, sobbing against his chest.

3

“It looks like his office,” Banks said, when Gristhorpe turned on the light in the last upstairs room.

Two large desks formed an L-shape. On one of them stood a computer and a laser printer, and on a small table next to them stood a fax machine with a basket attached at the front for collecting the cut-off sheets. At the back of the computer desk, a hutch stood against the wall. The compartments were full of boxes of disks and software manuals, mostly for word processing, spreadsheets and accounting programs, along with some for standard utilities.

The other desk stood in front of the window, which framed a view of the farmyard. Scene-of-Crime Officers were still going about their business down there taking samples of just about everything in sight, measuring distances, trying to get casts of footprints, sifting soil. In the barn, their bright arc lamps had replaced Darby’s roving light.

This was the desk where Rothwell dealt with handwritten correspondence and phone calls, Banks guessed. There was a blotter, which looked new – no handy wrong-way-around clues scrawled there – a jam-jar full of pens and pencils, a blank scratch-pad, an electronic adding machine of the kind that produces a printed tape of its calculations, and an appointment calendar open at the day of the murder, May 12.

The only things written there were “Dr. Hunter” beside the 10:00 a.m. slot, “Make dinner reservation: Mario’s, 8:30 p.m.” Below that, and written in capitals all across the afternoon, “FLOWERS?” Banks had noticed a vase full of fresh flowers in the living room. An anniversary present? Sad when touching gestures like that outlive the giver. He thought of Sandra again, and suddenly he wanted very much to be near her, to bridge the distance that had grown between them, to hold her and feel her warmth. He shivered.

“All right, Alan?” Gristhorpe asked.

“Fine. Someone just walked over my grave.”

“Look at all this.” Gristhorpe pointed to the two metal filing cabinets and the heavy-duty shelves that took up the room’s only long, unbroken wall. “Business records, by the looks of it. Someone’s going to have to sift through it.” He looked toward the computer and grimaced. “We’d better get Phil to have a look at this lot tomorrow,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust myself to turn the bloody thing on without blowing it up.”

Banks grinned. He was aware of Gristhorpe’s Luddite attitude toward computers. He quite liked them, himself. Of course, he had only the most rudimentary skills and never seemed to be able to do anything right, but Phil Richmond, “Phil the Hacker” as he was known around the station, ought to be able to tell them a thing or two about Rothwell’s system.

Finding nothing else of immediate interest in the office, they walked out to the rear of the house, which faced north, and stood in the back garden, the hems of their trousers damp with dew. It was after five now, close to dawn. A pale sun was slowly rising in the east behind a veil of thin cloud that had appeared over the last couple of hours, mauve on the horizon, but giving the rest of the sky a light gray wash and the landscape the look of a water-color. A few birds sang, and occasionally the sound of a farm vehicle starting up broke the silence. The air smelled moist and fresh.

It was certainly a garden they stood in, and not just a backyard. Someone – Rothwell? His wife? – had planted rows of vegetables – beans, cabbage, lettuce, all neatly marked – a small area of herbs and a strawberry patch. At the far end, beyond a dry-stone wall, the land fell away steeply to a beck that coursed down the daleside until it fed into the River Swain at Fortford.

The village of Fortford, about a mile down the hillside, was just waking up. Below the exposed foundations of the Roman fort on its knoll to the east, the cottages with their flagstone roofs huddled around the green and the square-towered church. Already, smoke drifted from some of the chimneys as farm laborers and shopkeepers prepared themselves for the coming day. Country folk were early risers.

The whitewashed front of the sixteenth-century Rose and Crown glowed pink in the early light. Even in there, someone would soon be in the kitchen, making bacon and eggs for the paying guests, especially for the ramblers, who liked to be off early. At the thought of food, his stomach rumbled. He knew Ian Falkland, the landlord of the Rose and Crown, and thought it might not be a bad idea to have a chat with him about Keith Rothwell. Though he was an expatriate Londoner, like Banks, Ian knew most of the local dalesfolk, and, given his line of work, he picked up a fair amount of gossip.

Finally, Banks turned to Gristhorpe and broke the silence. “They certainly seemed to know what was what, didn’t they?” he said. “I don’t imagine it was a lucky guess that the girl was in the house alone.”

“You’re thinking along the same lines as I am, aren’t you, Alan?” said Gristhorpe. “An execution. A hit. Call it what you will.”

Banks nodded. “I can’t see any other lines to think along yet. Everything points to it. The way they came in and waited, the position of the body, the coolness, the professionalism of it all. Even the way one of them said touching the girl wasn’t part of the deal. It was all planned. Yes, I think it was an execution. It certainly wasn’t a robbery or a random killing. They hadn’t been through the house, as far as we could tell. Everything seems in order. And if it was a robbery, they’d no need to kill him, especially that way. The question is why? Why should anyone want to execute an accountant?”

“Hmm,” said Gristhorpe. “Unhappy client, maybe? Someone he turned in to the Inland Revenue?” Nearby, a peewit sensed their closeness to its ground nest and started buzzing them, piping its high-pitched call. “One of the things we have to do is find out how honest an accountant our Mr. Rothwell was,” Gristhorpe went on. “But let’s not speculate too much yet, Alan. We don’t know if there’s anything missing, for a start. Rothwell might have had a million in gold bullion hidden away in his garage for all we know. But you’re right about the execution angle. And that means we could be dealing with something very big, big enough to contract a murder for.”

“Sir?”

At that moment, one of the SOC officers came into the garden through the back door.

Gristhorpe turned. “Yes?”

“We’ve found something, sir. In the garage. I think you’d both better come and have a look for yourselves.”

4

They followed the officer back to the brightly lit garage. Rothwell’s body had, mercifully, been taken to the morgue, where Dr. Glendenning, the Home Office pathologist, would get to work on it as soon as he could. Two men from the SOC team stood by the barn door. One was holding something with a pair of tweezers and the other was peering at it closely.

“What is it?” Banks asked.

“It’s wadding, sir. From the shotgun,” said the SOCO with the tweezers. “You see, sir, you can buy commercially made shotgun cartridges, but you can also reload the shells at home. Plenty of farmers and recreational shooters do it. Saves money.”

“Is that what this bloke did?” Banks asked.

“Looks like it, sir.”

“To save money? Typical Yorkshireman. Like a Scotsman stripped of his generosity.”

“Cheeky southern bastard,” said Gristhorpe, then turned to the SOCO. “Go on, lad.”

“Well, sir, I don’t know how much you know about shotguns, but they take cartridges, not bullets.”

Banks knew that much, at least, and he suspected that Gristhorpe, from Dales farming stock, knew a heck of a lot more. But they usually found it best to let the SOCOs show off a bit.

“We’re listening,” said Gristhorpe.

Emboldened by that, the officer went on. “A shotgun shell’s made up of a primer, a charge of gunpowder and the pellets, or shot. There’s no slug and there’s no rifling in the barrel, so you can’t get any characteristic markings to trace back to the weapon. Except from the shell, of course, which bears the imprint of the firing and loading mechanisms. But we don’t have a shell. What we do have is this.” He held up the wadding. “Commercial wadding is usually made of either paper or plastic, and you can sometimes trace the shell’s manufacturer through it. But this isn’t commercial.”

“What exactly is it?” asked Banks, reaching out.

The SOCO passed him the tweezers and said, “Don’t know for certain yet, but it looks like something from a color magazine. And luckily, it’s not too badly burned inside, only charred around the edges. It’s tightly packed, but we’ll get it unfolded and straightened out when we get it to the lab, then maybe we’ll be able to tell you the name, date and page number.”

“Then all we’ll have to do is check the list of subscribers,” said Banks, “and it’ll lead us straight to our killer. Dream on.”

The SOCO laughed. “We’re not miracle workers, sir.”

“Has anyone got a magnifying glass?” Banks asked the assembly at large. “And I don’t want any bloody cracks about Sherlock Holmes.”

One of the SOCOs passed him a glass, the rectangular kind that came with the tiny-print, two-volume edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Banks held up the wadding and examined it through the glass.

What he saw was an irregularly shaped wad of crumpled paper, no more than about an inch across at its widest point. At first he couldn’t make out anything but the blackened edge of the wadded paper but it certainly looked as if it were from some kind of magazine. He looked more closely, turning the wadding this way and that, holding it closer and further, then finally the disembodied shapes coalesced into something recognizable. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, letting his arm fall slowly to his side.

“What is it, Alan?” Gristhorpe asked.

Banks handed him the glass. “You’d better have a look for yourself,” he said. “You won’t believe me.”

Banks stood back and watched Gristhorpe scrutinize the wadding, knowing that it would be only a matter of moments before he noticed, as Banks had done, part of a pink tongue licking a dribble of semen from the tip of an erect penis.